Devil Take the Hindmost
by Ace of Gallifrey
Summary: Gilmore Girls, re-imagined from the very beginning. A pair of custody issues pre-series alter the dynamics of Stars Hollow. How does our beloved show look from just a little different angle? Ultimately L/L among other things. You don't want to miss this!
1. Prologue 1: Gaining a Son

**Title- **Devil Take The Hindmost**  
>CharactersPairings-** Full ensemble, with JavaJunkie undertones like you wouldn't believe**  
>Rating- <strong>Just assume that it's exactly like the show, but probably more four-letter words.**  
>Summary-<strong> Gilmore Girls, re-imagined from the very beginning. A pair of custody issues pre-series alter the dynamics of Stars Hollow. How does our beloved show look from just a little different angle?

**A/N-** I hate myself. No, I seriously, seriously disgust myself. Do you have any idea how many WIPs I have? Two others in the GG fandom, three for Les Miz (or is it four?), two and a half for Phantom (plus one I really want to write but haven't posted yet), some permanently-on-hiatus pieces in the Doctor Who fandom... I suck. I really do. I have great plot bunnies and absolutely zero follow-thru.

...oh my god. I am TJ. *hangs self*

Anyway, the point I have to make here is that this is a complete re-imagining of the series right from the very start. Most of the characters will be as you recognize them. However, there are two very, very significant differences. And those differences names are Rory and Jess. These opening two chapters are made to deal with/explain the differences in their life stories, giving some backstory as it were, and then we'll proceed with chapters that correspond with episodes from the pilot onward. I'm not sure how far I'm going with this, probably at least the first season, maybe more. We'll see.

* * *

><p>Prologue 1: Gaining a Son<p>

_"Dark lit streets are no place for kids  
>But it gives us more of a home than you ever did<br>We're the silentist's left to our own demise  
>You're still our last chance to get out of this place alive"<br>-Anberlin_

* * *

><p>"But... but where is she?" Luke asked, sinking heavily into the chair behind him as he felt his legs give out a little. Detachedly, he took notice of the uncomfortable orange upholstery; it was the same kind of chair they had in the offices at the bank. "I mean... where has she gone?"<p>

The woman in the cheap suit- Alice Wimbly, her nameplate read- smiled sadly at him. "Who knows? It happens sometimes, Mr. Danes. Sometimes women like your sister, young mothers living below the poverty line... sometimes the pressure of trying to support their children becomes too much. Or it's possible she was in some kind of trouble. It's a difficult call in cases like this."

Luke was pretty sure some part of her statement should offend him on behalf of his family, but unfortunately he knew Lizzie too well to actually argue with any of the case worker's insinuations. He rubbed his hands over his eyes tiredly, sitting forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

God, it was all such a mess. That morning, he had received a call from the New York Child Protective Services, informing him that he needed to meet with his sister's case worker- namely Ms. Wimbly- immediately. Upon arriving at the office just a few minutes before, he had received the stunning information that his sister, like her scumbag ex-husband before her, had bailed on her son. The day before, she had dropped him off at kindergarten as usual, and hadn't been heard from since. The only evidence that her defaction was in fact a defaction instead of something more sinister was the farewell note she had left on the table of her apartment, and her next-door neighbor's account that she had seen Liz around noon, carrying several full boxes down to her car before driving away.

He sighed. "Can I... do you have the note she left?" he asked.

Ms. Wimbly nodded, a slight look of sympathy crossing her prematurely lined face. She rifled through the (very thick) file on her desk, extracted a few pieces of stationery with a letterhead from a Motel 6, and handed them across to him. "It was addressed to you, in the first place," she informed him.

Luke looked down at his errant sister's missive.

_Dear Luke,_

_I'm sorry, big brother. I know I'm letting you down again and I'm really sorry. Worse, I know I'm letting Jess down. But you know what? He's gonna be better off without me. I'm no good. Everybody thinks I'm oblivious, but I'm not. I see the way people look at me, twenty-two years old and carting around a five-year-old kid. I know what the neighbors think, I know what the cops told me when I got busted for possession again, I know I'm this close to losing him anyway. And I can't handle them taking him away from me. Isn't that selfish of me? I know he'd be better somewhere else, probably anywhere else, but I can't bear to watch them take him away from me.  
>God, I can imagine your face reading this, knowing I'm gone off again. I remember what you looked like when we figured out Jimmy left. You were so mad. I bet you're gonna be mad at me, too. You probably should be. But I gotta tell you... I get where Jimmy was coming from now. The day you realize your kid is better off without you in his life is a horrible day. You gotta understand, I'm gonna screw him up so bad if I stay. I don't know why I'm so fucked up, but I don't want him to be.<br>__I'm babbling, I'll stop now. Luke, just promise me something? Make sure he's ok. Tell him that this is for the best. Tell him I love him, I really do. _

_See you around,  
><em>_Liz_

He didn't know whether to laugh or cry. The letter, and the sentiment, were so typically Liz.

"What, uh, what now?" he asked. "I mean... what about Jess?"

Ms. Wimbly looked down at the file again, more, Luke thought, to avoid his eyes than because she actually needed to consult the file. "It's the usual policy, in cases like this, to place the child with a close family member."

Unable to handle the implications of that statement just yet, Luke instead muttered, "There's a "usual policy" for stuff like this? Christ, how often do mothers just run out like this?"

She forced out a sad smile. "More often than I like to think about, Mr. Danes."

"God..."

"It's a sad world we live in."

"That it is."

"Mr. Danes?"

"Yeah?"

"You are your sister's next-of-kin. At present, you are Jess's only close family."

Luke chewed his lip. "You think I should take him."

"I don't _think_ anything at present," Ms. Wimbly said coolly. "At least for now it's best that someone Jess knows take temporary custody of him while we explore all possible options."

"Someone he knows?" Luke scoffed. "I've seen him maybe twice since he was born!"

"Are you saying you won't take custody of your nephew?" she asked in a challenging voice.

"Hell no, I'm not saying that! He's family, of course I'm gonna take him!" Luke said, rising sharply to his feet, beginning to pace the cramped office. "But God, he's five! What the hell do I know about taking care of a five-year-old? I live in this tiny damn apartment above my dad's old hardware store! Well, it's a diner now, or it will be when I open in two months, but still... Christ, where can I possibly put a kid in that place? It used to be an office. And he'll need to go to school, right? I guess Stars Hollow has a pretty decent school system, it's not great or anything but I got through it alright. But he's already been in school for months, he's already started making friends... But then, who the hell cares about friends you make when you're five? Chances are half of them move away by the time you're eight anyway, and the rest you won't even remember you used to be friends with even if you see 'em everyday..."

Abruptly, the wind went out of his rant and he stopped pacing, dropping back into the chair. "God, look at me. How am I gonna take care of him?"

Ms. Wimbly studied him over the top of her cats-eye glasses, then said, "May I say something here?" At Luke's vague wave of a hand, she continued, "Mr. Danes, I have been working with your sister since CPS first took her case three years ago. If you are half the man she seems to think you are, you will do just fine with Jess. And frankly, even if you're not, I think you'll still be just fine, if for no other reason than that you want to do well enough that Jess does not have to go into foster care."

"That's a possibility?" Luke asked, suddenly very attentive.

She nodded. "It is always a possibility in cases such as this."

"I don't want that. Family takes care of family."

"That is ideal, yes. Alright, Mr. Danes, let me tell you what we are going to do now. Jess stayed in our facility here last night, so he is on-site. Once we've settled matters here, you can take him home with you tonight."

"Tonight?"

"It's in his best interests to settle him into a new home as quickly as possible."

"Because, uh, it would be bad for him to feel... unsettled, right?"

Ms. Wimbly gave him a rare genuine smile. "Precisely. As I was saying, you will take him into custody immediately, and he will remain in your care while we review the case. We'll coordinate with the Connecticut offices to evaluate your living situation, your suitability to be Jess's long-term guardian, et cetera. Once the evaluation is complete, depending on the outcome you will either be named Jess's permanent legal guardian, or we will consider other options."

"Other options like, like foster homes?"

"Yes."

"Wow. Okay, yeah."

"Do you have any questions?"

"Not right now. I probably will," Luke said, feeling completely overwhelmed.

"Alright, then. I have some paperwork here that I'll need you to fill out before you can go see Jess..."

* * *

><p>Luke's head was spinning. This was all happening so fast. "Dammit Liz..." he chanted internally as he walked down the apparently interminable hallway, following Ms. Wimbly to the room where Jess had been housed since the police had brought him to the CPS building the night before. He was being thrust abruptly into the role of instant father... again. Well, not <em>really<em>. The last time he'd been in a pseudo-parental role, he had been nine and his mother had just died. His father had been a zombie for months, and it had fallen to Luke to take care of seven-year-old Lizzie, a role he accepted with willingness, albeit not capability. He had felt just as dizzy and overwhelmed then as he did now, maybe more so, and he couldn't help but think that if he had been better able to care for his sister during her formative years, perhaps this situation would never have been created in the first place.

God, how the hell was he supposed to do this? He didn't know a damn thing about raising little kids. He followed Ms. Wimbly blindly into the little room at the end of the hall, and found himself abruptly faced with his nephew. The sight shocked him out of his dazed state.

Jess had grown a little since Luke had last seen him, but he was still very small for his age. He was dressed in a ripped up pair of tiny jeans and a red t-shirt that had more than one unidentifiable stain around the collar. He was perched on the little cot in the room, sitting on his hands with his head down, staring intently at his dirty sneakers.

"Jess?" he asked softly.

The little boy looked up at him, and Luke had a feeling as if he'd had the wind knocked out of him. The child's eyes were huge and dark in his tiny face, and despite how young he was, glittered with awareness and intelligence. What he had known for more than an hour now but hadn't fully understood until he saw his nephew suddenly clicked with him.

This child was depending on him. It was up to him to look after this innocent little boy, to make sure he was kept safe and happy.

"Do you remember me?" he asked, still in that same soft voice. "I'm your Uncle Luke."

Jess nodded slowly, studying him as closely as he had been his shoes just minutes before.

"I'm here to take care of you," Luke told him.

Jess slid off the cot and looked up at his uncle from his place much closer to the ground. "She's not coming back, is she?" he asked quietly.

Luke's heart broke a little at the awareness that no little boy should ever have. He knelt down to put himself on eye level with his nephew. "I don't know, buddy," he confessed.

Jess's lower lip trembled just a little. Acting on instinct, Luke opened his arms and pulled him into a fierce hug. He heard a soft sniffling beside his ear and held his nephew all the tighter for it. After a minute, Jess's tiny arms went around his neck. Luke knew in that instant that he could do this. It terrified him, and he wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't screw up the boy just as much as his sister would have, but he could do this, because Jess needed him to. He needed a constant in his life.

"It's gonna be okay, Jess," he said, and strangely, he meant it.


	2. Prologue 2: Losing a Daughter

**A/N-** And now for the other pre-series twist... a much less happy one. Well, not that Liz being an uber-flake and abandoning her toddler is exactly _happy_, but Jess being raised by someone who isn't a nut-case with abusive boyfriends definitely is. This, however, is all-around sad.

* * *

><p>Prologue 2: Losing a Daughter<p>

_"I turned to look but it was gone  
>I cannot put my finger on it now<br>The child is grown,  
>The dream is gone.<br>I have become comfortably numb."  
>-Pink Floyd<em>

* * *

><p>Lorelai wanted to blame Mia, honestly she did. It was Mia who had cajoled her into finally giving Richard and Emily her address. If it weren't for that, they would never have found them. They would never have come to the Independence Inn, they would never have walked out back to see the potting shed, and they would never have called Child Protective Services, or filed a custody suit the second they returned Hartford.<p>

Honestly, though, as much as she wanted to blame Mia, Lorelai knew it wasn't really her fault. Mia had tried to do the right thing, and it _had_ been the right thing. Or, it would have been if her parents had behaved true to form and eschewed leaving their castle in the sky if it meant going to some provincial town, especially for no better reason than seeing their estranged and "ungrateful" daughter. For once, though, Richard and Emily had stepped out of character.

Her hands shook from gripping the steering wheel on Mia's car so hard she thought her knuckles might burst through the skin. She trembled a little, and debated pulling the car over to the side of the road, because there was a chance she was going to throw up. She decided against it. For now, she was strangely calm despite the shaking and the nausea. She could still see clearly, and she wanted to get back to the Inn while her sanity still lasted. Over the white noise of the cassette she had started in automatically when she got in the car, Lorelai couldn't hear her daughter's voice, and she was grateful for the quiet in her head.

Maybe, she thought sadly, if it hadn't been January when the CPS came to evaluate her living situation at her parents' demand... The little potting shed was freezing in January, and it took a lot of blankets and the space heater she had salvaged from the Inn to make the little room livable, but really, they _had_ managed just fine. In the winter they were only in there at night, and then they had the heater and each other and a tremendous mountain of quilts, some of which Lorelai had made herself, to keep them warm. Maybe if the CPS had seen their little home in the spring or summer, they wouldn't have recommended that Rory be placed with her grandparents. Or maybe if her parents hadn't had so much damn money, she would have won the suit for full custody.

She tried to tell herself that it would be alright. After all, she would still see her daughter. The court had given her dispensation to have Rory for the summer months, when school was out. And she could visit her in Hartford anytime she wanted. This whole struggle had proved to her beyond any doubt that Richard and Emily Gilmore were indeed the most ruthless, cold people she had ever or would ever meet, but even they weren't heartless enough to deny her access to her child.

She snorted. No, she could see Rory whenever she wanted. She just couldn't raise her. She wasn't allowed to help her be free of all the trappings of Richard and Emily's world. She wasn't allowed to let her daughter just be Rory. She wouldn't get to see her every single day and talk to her and brush her hair every night and go to sleep with her hot little body curled up against her.

It made her feel even more sick to her stomach, the thought of going back to the potting shed night after night with no Rory tagging along, telling her all the little stories about her day.

There would be no one to laugh with over nothing at all.

There would be no one to eat with her in the kitchen after most of the staff had left.

There would be no one to watch stupid movies with her when Mia let them use a TV in one of the empty guest rooms.

Her heart dropped and her hands tightened still further on the cold steering wheel, as Rory's tiny angelic face appeared in her mind, the look on her face as Richard had carried her away. Yes, Lorelai knew she would see her child the day after tomorrow, when she would have the afternoon shift off, and she could take the bus to Hartford to visit her... but what the hell was that? An hour with her daughter, maybe two if she let her mother rope her into staying for dinner. How could that possibly make up for the time that even now was slipping away from her?

Lorelai pulled into the driveway of the Independence; she steered Mia's Buick around to the faculty lot and safely parked it in the reserved spot. She killed the engine and sat staring blankly across the snow-blanketed back lawn to the potting shed for a moment. Then she took a painful breath, drew the key from the ignition, and exited the car.

She tugged her unzipped coat closely about her as she slogged through the snow, not really feeling the icy piles of snow plopping down into her boots as she stumbled through drifts as high as her knees. She unlocked her tiny little home and tumbled through the door, and vaguely observed that in one respect they were right: the temperature wasn't noticeably different from outside. She turned on the space heater and zipped up her jacket.

As she turned to lock the door behind her, something on the bed caught her eye: Colonel Clucker, the little stuffed chicken her friend Sookie, the new sous-chef, had given Rory for her sixth birthday back in October. Her little girl had loved the little animal and not a single night had passed since that Rory hadn't fallen asleep with it clutched in her arms. Until tonight.

Lorelai reached out a shaking hand and picked up the Colonel. She stared into the bird's beady glass eyes. She had had six beautiful years with her baby girl, and that was it. No more Rory. The summers weren't really enough and she damn well knew it; Richard and Emily would have ten months to her two, the two that she was only granted on her parents' whims. Her child would grow up a stranger.

She clutched Colonel Clucker to her chest and leaned back against the door. Slowly she slid her back down the yellow-painted wood, not minding the puddle of melting snow that met her at the base of the door.

Lorelai would give Mia's keys back to her later. For right now, she wasn't quite ready to look anyone in the eye and tell them how she had failed her daughter.


	3. The Same But Different

**A/N-** This chapter corresponds to the Pilot. A few notes before we begin this thing in earnest: ASP & Co. kind of repeatedly contradict themselves about how long Luke and Lorelai have actually known each other. They said eight years in Written in the Stars, but it's also made clear that Luke has known the Lorelais since Rory was at the oldest ten (and possibly younger), and since that makes it at LEAST ten years as of WBB, that's kind of an obvious contradiction. So to make it all clear as to the timeline _I_ am following in _this_ re-interpretation:

In November of 1990, Luke got custody of Jess. In February of 1991, Lorelai lost custody of Rory. Rachel did come back in November of 1994, as in (approximate) canon, but things didn't follow the story you know (more on that later). In January of 1995, Lorelai went to Luke's for the first time. And I think that pretty much brings us up to date for September of 2000. So essentially at this point Luke and Lorelai have known each other for a bit more than five and a half years. All clear? Great, okay.

Brace yourself for a lot of tl;dr-ness...

* * *

><p>Episode 1x01: The Same But Different<p>

_"For I have made her prison be  
>Her every step away from me<br>And this child I would destroy  
>If you tried to set her free"<br>-Vienna Teng_

* * *

><p>"Please, Luke. Please, please, <em>please!<em>"

"How many cups have you had this morning?"

"None!"

"Plus?"

"...Five. But yours is better!"

"You have a problem."

"Yes I do."

With a broad and oh-so-innocent grin, Lorelai held out the coffee mug to him insistently. With a long-suffering sigh, Luke took the mug and filled it. Lorelai smirked internally in satisfaction. No matter how crazy a day she was guaranteed to have, she could always count on Luke to be the same old Luke.

"Junkie," he accused.

"Angel," she replied sweetly. "You've got wings, baby!"

She whipped off her hat and returned to the table where she had left her coat and scarf. Sitting down, she took a long, savoring sip of the coffee. She closed her eyes in enjoyment. Yes, Luke definitely had the magic touch when it came to her elixir of life.

"You make that look really good." A voice from beside her table interrupted the private moment she and the coffee were having.

Lorelai looked up at the owner of the voice, a young man who looked to be in his mid- to late-twenties, good looking enough but unmemorable. "It is really good, it's the best coffee in town," she said politely.

"Oh?" he replied flirtatiously. "I'll have to get a cup." He glanced around the diner. "I've never been here before. Just passing through on my way to Hartford."

Lorelai was more than aware that this guy was hitting on her. She supposed she was flattered but she wasn't interested, for a number of reasons. Still, turning off her usual wit and charm was too difficult to do it just to blow someone off. "Wow, you're a regular Jack Kerouac," she quipped.

"Uh... yeah," the guy said, sounding confused.

She glanced down momentarily to hide her smirk. Poor, clueless stranger.

"Hey, you mind if I sit down?" he asked. He pulled out a chair and straddled it without waiting for her reply.

"Oh, actually, I'm meeting someone. So I-"

"I'm Joey," he said, cutting right across her.

"Okay," Lorelai said in surprise, torn between being affronted and amused.

When she said nothing else, Joey leaned forward and teasingly asked, "What? You don't have a name?"

Before she could say anything in response, an arm holding a coffee pot descended into her field of vision to top off the admittedly undersized cup of coffee Luke had originally poured, and a voice said, "Man, take a hint! She's not interested."

Lorelai glanced up at the owner of the arm and the voice, and restrained a laugh. Luke's nephew, Jess Mariano, was hitting Joey with the patented diner-boy Sarcastic Eyebrow, which his uncle had invented and he had perfected. Joey met his expression with a cocky grin and glanced back to Lorelai.

"Well, what do you think, Mystery Woman? Is Coffee Boy here right? Am I getting blown off?"

She gave him a smile as consolation. "Sorry, Joey. I'm already spoken for."

He eyed her. "Sure I can't convince you otherwise?"

"As flattering as the sentiment is, yes, I'm sure."

He shrugged unapologetically, getting to his feet. "Well, can't blame a guy for trying."

"I suppose not," she said. "It was nice to meet you. Enjoy Hartford."

Joey moved back to the counter and tapped another man about his age on the shoulder, muttering something to him. The other guy finished up the process of paying Luke, and the pair of them walked out of the diner.

"What, no tip?" Jess called after them. He shook his head, rolling his eyes, before turning away to head back to the counter.

Before he could get too far, however, Lorelai's hand grabbing onto the coffee pot he was carrying stopped him. "Hey, what was that?" she asked sternly.

Jess shrugged. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, jumping in on my conversation back there. That was totally uncalled for."

"Oh please, that guy was a putz," Jess said with another eye-roll. "You were all but flipping him the bird and he wasn't getting it. Figured I'd help you out."

Lorelai gave him a toned-down version of the Mom Look, and said sternly, "I appreciate your concern, Jess, but I just want to assure you that I am in fact a big girl now. I can handle guys like that, and have successfully been doing so for easily several years longer than you've been alive."

"Jeez, you try to be nice..." he shot back, throwing up his free hand in surrender. "Alright, I get it."

He returned to the counter and put the coffee pot back on the burner. As he was headed for the cash register to ring up an impatient Mrs. Slutzky, Lorelai called out to him.

"Hey Jess?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for the intervention," she said with a wink.

He flashed her a rare grin, then turned to deal with the grumbling septuagenarian waiting on him.

Lorelai, for her part, turned back to her coffee with a smile. Jess was a good kid. She'd known him since he was ten or so, and secretly, in her heart of hearts, she thought of him as sort of an adopted child. His mother, Luke's elusive and rarely-mentioned sister, had apparently abandoned her son when he was quite young, leaving him to the care of his uncle. She was sure he couldn't have gotten luckier than to have Luke as a surrogate father, but she felt bad for the young man, not having a mother around to do all the things mothers were supposed to do, so when she could, she tried to do little things to be a female influence in his life.

Honestly, Lorelai sometimes wondered if it was her affection for Jess that had caused her and Luke to become friends in the first place. When they had first met, the pair of them hadn't gotten along so well. It was, she knew, mostly her fault. Quite aside from the most spectacularly bad first impression in the history of bad first impressions, she had harbored kind of a crush on Luke for awhile, and in the most juvenile display of middle-school gender politics she could possibly have committed, she had called him "Duke" for a solid two years and made it her mission in life to be as annoying as possible, just to get a reaction out of the usually stone-faced diner man.

Eventually, though, she had calmed down and gotten past her attraction to him, and he had warmed up to her. Largely, she suspected, due to Jess. She had come into their lives at a pivotal point for the boy, just entering his preteen years, and although she didn't like to take credit for it ordinarily, she knew she had been helpful to Luke. He had done his best to be a good parent, essentially building his life to revolve exclusively around his nephew and the diner in fairly equal shares (though she knew that if a choice had to be made, Jess would always come first). However, it didn't exactly leave him much time for socializing. Luke was a reticent and solitary man by nature, and the complications that came with raising a child had isolated him still further. He had only a handful of friends, and most of them lived out of town. As a result of sheer proximity and her obvious affection for Jess, Lorelai had become something of a confidante for Luke. She was able to offer him perspective when he was furious with his nephew for whatever reason, or give him advice and alternatives when he found himself stumped on how to handle a disciplinary issue.

In a way, Lorelai supposed she had taken to mothering Jess (as much as the teenager would allow, anyway) as a way to make up for her own limited time with her daughter. She still went to Hartford every other Tuesday to spend a little time with her, but it wasn't anywhere near enough. And the fact that the usual month in Stars Hollow over the summer had been forgone in favor of the Gilmores taking their granddaughter to "experience Europe the _right_ way" had cut down even more on what little mother/daughter bonding Lorelai was allowed with Rory.

No, not Rory. It was _Lorelai_ now. The Rory nickname had been abandoned by almost everyone years ago. Calling her Rory now was mostly just to avoid confusion when her mother happened to be present. Just like parachute pants, the nickname was out of style.

* * *

><p>"Independence Inn, Michel speaking... No, I'm sorry, we're completely booked. We have a wedding party here. No, there is really nothing I can do... <em>Yes<em>, I'm sure!"

Lorelai tuned out the perpetual accented droning of her "charming" concierge, in favor of intervening in the disaster-in-the-making that was Drella, her hired harpist. After a conversation that was disproportionately exasperating for as brief as it was, she thought- though she wasn't entirely sure- that she had successfully averted a harp-related homicide. Or at least had prevented Drella's head from exploding.

Turning away from the still-complaining musician, Lorelai caught sight of a man leaning against the front desk, eyes on her. He was of average height, with light auburn hair and slyly twinkling gray eyes, well-dressed in a tidy charcoal suit with a tie that screamed "brightly colored yet casually understated." When those mischievous eyes landed on her, an eager smile lit up his handsome face.

"Hey, Lorie," he said.

As usual, she found her lips turn up irresistibly in response to his vibrant grin. "Kenneth!" she greeted, feeling discombobulated by the sight of her... whatever. "What are you doing here?"

Kenneth's grin widened. "As a matter of fact, I came to extend an invitation."

"Ooh, intriguing. Go on," she flirted.

"My office is sending me to New York for a week to negotiate a new contract for one of our biggest clients," he informed her.

Lorelai raised an eyebrow. "Well, well, aren't we just Mister Daddy-Warbucks-in-the-making?"

Kenneth chuckled. "Yes, well. The thing about a week in New York is that I'm also going to have a week_end_ in New York. A _big, long_, lonely weekend, alone in a city that never sleeps... a city that would be much more fun to experience with a beautiful woman by my side."

"Are you inviting me to spend the weekend in New York with you?"

"I suppose it could be interpreted like that, yes."

Lorelai circled around to her usual side of the desk as a delaying tactic, and busied herself with sorting the stack of mail that Michel had abandoned. "I dunno, Kenneth," she said musingly, avoiding his eyes.

Her handsome gentleman caller let out a good-natured sigh. "Come on, Lorie, I know you don't have to work this weekend. You told me you didn't. I figured that was an open invitation to see more of you. Wasn't it?"

She shrugged. "I guess."

"Aren't _we_ just the non-committal queen today?" he gently chastised. "We've been seeing each other for... what is it, two or three months now? Don't you think it's time to take our relationship to the next level?"

At that, Lorelai did look up, and looked him right in the eye. "Relationship?" she asked, a note of reprimand and a note of fear blending equally in her suddenly defensive tone. "Kenneth, this?" She gestured between the two of them. "This is not a relationship. I told you that from the beginning: I'm not looking for commitment."

"Commitment?" Kenneth scoffed. "Who said anything about commitment? Is it so wrong to want to call the woman I've been seeing for _months_ my girlfriend?"

"Yes, when she's _not_ your girlfriend!" Lorelai shot back. "Can we not do this here? I'd rather not make a scene in front of guests."

"Fine, where would you _rather_ do this?"

Lorelai grabbed his elbow and pulled him into the currently-empty dining room. "Here is just fine," she said, pulling the door closed behind her. She crossed her arms, and Kenneth mirrored her defensive stance.

"What the hell, Lorelai?" he bit out, using her full name for the first time in weeks.

She shook her head. "I've been up front with you from the beginning, Ken. No strings attached. I like you. I like spending time with you. We have fun. But you've gotta understand, I'm a "for now" girl, see?"

"No, I don't see! Lorie, you're amazing. You're smart and funny and vibrant and more than a little insane and I really think you and I could be great together if you could just get past whatever it is that's holding you back. I'm not saying we're going ring-shopping tomorrow or ever, but you said it yourself. I like you. I like spending time with you. Why can't we just keep doing that, and call it something else? Nothing changes, not until you're ready for that."

Lorelai sighed, feeling that unpleasant sensation in the pit of her stomach again. She hated breakups. Even not-really-breakups like this one. It was always uncomfortable and left her with a headache and a bitter taste in her mouth. "No, Kenneth, that's not who I am. Once upon a time, maybe I was relationship-girl, but I'm just not built for that, and I refuse to apologize for being what I am. I've been honest about this. I'm sorry that it hurts you, but I can't just change who I am for you."

He looked at her with intent eyes, studying her for a long moment and trying to break her down through sheer force of eye contact. Lorelai would almost have laughed in another situation. Trying to stare down the daughter of Emily Gilmore was a futile hope. She had to hand it to him, he kept up the attempt much longer than most would have.

Finally, he sighed. "I guess I probably don't want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with me, right?" he asked rhetorically.

"Probably not," she agreed. "I really am sorry to hurt you."

Kenneth leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. "Goodbye, Lorelai Gilmore," he said with a sweet half portion of his usual brilliant grin.

* * *

><p>"<em>Please<em> tell me you're kidding."

"Unfortunately not."

"Good God, this town comes up with some weird shit but... a teen hayride? Really?"

In Stars Hollow, where everyone knew and was friends with everyone else, Jess Mariano saw himself as a sort of bridge between Luke and the rest of the town: one foot keeping company with his uncle on Loner Mountain, and the other firmly in the crazy zany world of town festivals and an excess of community spirit. It was a balance he liked, but it didn't win him too many admirers. Then again, Jess had no desire to have a plethora of friends. He, like his uncle, preferred to have a small number of very close friends rather than a wide circle of acquaintances. He had his little group of like-minded guys he hung out with, and that was good enough for him.

And then... then there was Lane Kim. If someone were to put a gun to Jess's head and demand that he identify his best friend, it would be Lane he named. That didn't quite sum it up, though. There wasn't really a word for what the two of them were to each other. They had met in the second grade. He was the shy boy with no mother, and she was the bouncy girl with a bit too much of one. Their friendship was probably inevitable.

Everyone at Stars Hollow High thought Lane and Jess had to be an item, but both of them knew it wasn't like that. They had bonded to each other, becoming each other's surrogate sibling, which neither had by blood.

Mrs. Kim did not particularly approve of their friendship, especially considering Jess's gender. However, by some luck the stars had aligned in their favor. Jess was without parents, and therefore the sort of person towards whom Pastor Cho preached tolerance, charity, and understanding. Jess was a blood relative of Luke Danes, possibly the only man Mrs. Kim had any respect or tolerance for.

Perhaps most influential, however, had been the timely intervention of Lorelai the very first day Mrs. Kim discovered that the friend Lane had only previously referred to by an admittedly feminine name was actually a boy. The hysterical mother had hauled her eleven-year-old daughter into Luke's to demand that he keep his filthy nephew away from her innocent child. Lorelai, who like most of Stars Hollow was all too aware of Mrs. Kim's unique parenting style, had stepped in. She insisted that she would personally vouch for Jess's suitability as a friend for Lane, and suggested in a soothing tone that perhaps Mrs. Kim should simply think of Jess as a girl rather than a boy.

And so, with reluctant acceptance from the Kims, Lane and Jess had been allowed to maintain their close friendship (though for the sake of Mrs. Kim's sanity, Jess made sure to keep a low profile). Hence this delightful mocking opportunity Jess had been presented with.

"Can't you get out of it?" he asked.

Lane shook her head sadly, her curtain of beautiful ebony hair swinging around her face. "I'm going with the son of one of my parents' business associates. He's gonna be a doctor," she said, layering every syllable of her last sentence with as much snark as she could possibly cram in there.

"Jeez, and how old is he?"

"Sixteen."

"So he's gonna be a doctor by the time we're, what, thirty-something?"

Lane shrugged. "You know the Kims."

"Planning ahead _is_ the name of the game," Jess agreed sagely. "Still... a hayride? Really? Shouldn't they really save that kind of thing for Illinois? At least in the Midwest, it's kind of charming."

A deep male voice commented, "Actually, we wouldn't stoop that low even in Illinois."

Jess and Lane turned simultaneously to see the owner of the voice, a tall boy neither recognized. "Hey," Lane said. "Not placing your face. Are you new?"

He nodded, a friendly grin on his face. "Just moved here from Chicago."

"Hence the Illinois comment," Lane observed.

"Yeah. Uh, my name's Dean Forrester."

"I'm Lane Kim," she introduced herself politely. After an extended length of silence during which both of them looked to Jess, Lane rolled her eyes. "And my shy and reserved friend here is Jess Mariano. Apparently he's decided this is a great time to practice his Marcel Marceau impression."

Jess glared at her and shoved her shoulder gently. "Shut up." Turning back to Dean he said, "Hey, man. Welcome to Stars Hollow."

Dean nodded his acknowledgement. "I was wondering if you guys could point me in the direction of the central office. I'm supposed to meet with the principal and stuff, but this school-"

"-Is the most architecturally stupid building on the East Coast?" Jess supplied with a quirked eyebrow.

"Just go through the front doors over there, take two rights, go down the long hallway, take a left at the big red-painted doorway, then an immediate right, and the office is your first door on the left," Lane instructed helpfully.

Dean laughed. "No wonder I've been wandering around lost for twenty minutes. Thanks."

"No problem," Lane said.

Dean walked away, and Lane turned back to Jess with a gently reproachful look on her face. "You know, you should really get over these antisocial tendencies of yours," she said.

Jess shrugged. "What can I say? I didn't really have much interest in talking to that guy."

"Why not?"

"Do I need a reason?"

"Hi, do you know me at all?"

"I'll take that for a yes."

Lane grinned. "I gotta run. Jenna Masters borrowed my notes yesterday, I gotta get 'em back before bio. See you at lunch?"

"Sure thing."

* * *

><p>A loud crash drew Lorelai instinctively to the kitchen. "Sookie!" she cried in panic.<p>

"I'm okay, I'm okay!" her diminutive friend called from her spot on the floor.

"What did you do now?" Lorelai asked. She rushed to Sookie's side and knelt down next to her. "Why weren't you watching her?" she asked Salvador, Sookie's _garcon de cuisine_. "No estabas cuidandola?"

Salvador looked at her in exasperation and, with a wild gesture in Sookie's direction, said, "No, she's this! Bad food in the head!" With another disgusted look at his boss and his supervisor, he got to his feet and set about cleaning up the mess of dropped pots and caramelized sugar Sookie had made on the floor around her.

"I need you to be more careful!" Lorelai implored.

"I know, I'm sorry," Sookie said dismissively. "Hey, I fixed the peach sauce!"

Catching sight of her friend's waving hand, Lorelai said, "That's blood. You're bleeding. Why are you bleeding?"

"My stitches opened," Sookie explained, barely paying attention, so intent was she on explaining her latest culinary feat. "I was using too much maple syrup. It strangled the fruit!"

"When did you get stitches?" Lorelai demanded.

"Friday night. Radish roses."

"Okay, stop moving," Lorelai said, trying unsuccessfully to prevent Sookie from reaching up precariously to grab the sauce pan from the burner over her head.

"You gotta taste this sauce! You gotta try it while it's still warm," Sookie said reverently while Lorelai took the heavy pan from her before she could do herself further injury.

"Okay. Oh Sweetie, I need you to be more careful, I need there to be fewer accidents-"

"Yeah yeah yeah," Sookie interrupted, thrusting a spoon into Lorelai's open mouth.

A second of rare silence fell as Lorelai swallowed. "Oh dear god almighty... that's incredible!"

"I wanna put it on the waffles tomorrow morning for breakfast," Sookie said eagerly.

"I wanna take a bath in that sauce! Someday," Lorelai said with the fresh-faced delight of a child with an idea, "when we open our own inn, diabetics will line up to eat this sauce. But the key to someday achieving that dream is for you to stay alive long enough so we can actually open an inn." She placed the pan of warm sauce back on the stove top. "You understand?"

Sookie smiled tolerantly. "I understand."

"Alright, now let's get you up and to the doctor on three, okay?" Sookie took her proffered hand. "One, two three."

"Ow!"

"What?"

"Stepped on my thumb."

* * *

><p>They had to drive out to Woodbridge in order to get Sookie's stitches repaired. The Stars Hollow medical clinic, already barely equipped to treat anything more major than the stomach flu, was closed on Wednesdays.<p>

Sookie settled into the passenger seat of Lorelai's Jeep with a pleasant smile on her face. No one would ever guess that she had just had nine stitches on two fingers replaced just fifteen minutes earlier... but that was Sookie. You could get her down, but it never lasted long.

"So..." she said as they turned onto the highway back from Woodbridge. "Tell me. Who was Not-Tall, Not-Dark, and Very Handsome I saw you kissing in the dining room earlier?"

Lorelai's spine stiffened automatically. She'd had _this_ conversation before. "No one."

Sookie grinned. "Was it Dreamy Kenneth?" she asked, the beginnings of a squeal already detectible in her voice.

"Yes, that was Kenneth."

"Aw, he's coming by the Inn now?"

Lorelai shrugged. "He did come by the Inn. He probably won't anymore."

Sookie's face fell. "Oh no," she said.

"Oh no _what?_"

"You _always_ do this, Lorelai!"

"Do what?"

"You meet a guy- usually a pretty great guy, from what I've seen- and you date him for a few months, you seem to really like him, and then suddenly he's gone, just like that, and you never mention his name again," Sookie complained.

Lorelai shrugged. "It was time for us to part ways," she dismissed.

"What was so wrong with Kenneth? He was gorgeous, based on what I saw, and by your reports he was funny, interesting, he's got a great job, and the sex was fantastic... what more could you possibly want?"

"Absolutely nothing," Lorelai said. "It's what _he_ wanted that was the problem."

Sookie looked askance at her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, he invited me to go away with him for a weekend."

"To where?"

"New York."

Sookie's face lit up. "Ooh, how romantic!"

Lorelai sighed and turned her eyes back to the road. "Yeah, romantic. I don't want romantic, Sookie. I'm not interested in making a commitment to some guy I met in a bar, okay?"

"Lorelai, he isn't "some guy you met in a bar." I mean, he _is_, but he's a lot more than that, right? I mean, you've been dating for months."

She shrugged. "True, but it was never serious. I liked Kenneth. We had fun. That's all it was."

Sookie looked thoughtful as she examined Lorelai for a moment. "Is this... is this still about Christopher?"

"No!"

Lorelai had answered a little too quickly and a little too defensively, because Sookie clucked her tongue sympathetically and shook her head. "Sweetie, I thought you were over this. If all these nothing-relationships are about you getting some while you wait for Christopher-"

"Hey! That was uncalled for!"

Sookie was instantly contrite. "I'm sorry. But I just need to say this. If that's really not what this is about, then just ignore everything I'm about to say. But if it is, then I think it's really unfair to these guys... and it's really unhealthy for you. Maybe this is something you should talk to Chanda about."

They pulled to a halt at a stop sign coming into Stars Hollow. "Sookie," Lorelai said forcefully, taking advantage of the stopped vehicle to look her friend full in the eye. "_Thank you_ for your concern. But frankly, this is not your business. I appreciate you worrying about me, but I will handle my own love life in the way I see fit."

"Okay," Sookie said, nodding meekly.

* * *

><p>"For those of you who have not finished the final chapters of <em>Huckleberry Finn<em> you may use this time to do so. For those of you who have, you can start on your essay now. Whichever task you choose, do it silently."

Jess had long ago tuned out the sound of his teacher's voice, and was currently working on ignoring the frankly disgusting bubblegum-and-pentyl ethanoate wafting from the quartet of girls that sat a few seats ahead of him, painting their nails instead of doing anything even remotely constructive. The inanity of his peers never failed to astound him.

"Mr. Mariano? Mr. Mariano!"

The teacher's voice finally cut through his fixed determination to ignore his surroundings. "Yes, Ms. Traister?" he asked, glancing over the top of his copy of _Les Miserables_.

"While your dedication to great literature is admirable, Mr. Mariano, this time is set aside either for completing the novel- which I think it is safe to assume you have already done- or completing your essay. I assure you that Victor Hugo will still be every bit as compelling once you have completed your assignment."

"Isn't the assignment due tomorrow?" Jess asked.

"Indeed it is."

"Then, can't I just hand it in tomorrow?"

"That is how the system tends to work, yes," Ms. Traister snarked. "However, it would be in your best interests to begin work on it as quickly as possible so that you don't have to rush."

Jess restrained an eye-roll with maximum effort, then with an air of long-suffering patience, marked his page in the book and reached down into the backpack that rested against the back of his chair. He pulled out five typed pages, got to his feet, strode to the front of the class, and handed it to Ms. Traister. "My essay," he said simply. "It's just a rough draft, but if you'd care to look it over, feel free."

He walked back to his seat and picked up his book once more. Before he opened it, however, he thought again and called out, "Oh, and Ms. Traister? In case you haven't noticed, I'm not exactly the only one not "on-task" here. I'm sure Carrie Bradshaw and her pals there can tell you what I mean." He nodded significantly in the direction of the four girls who were painting their nails, all of whom immediately turned to glare at him. "Oh, and if I were you, I wouldn't work out your bitterness about the divorce by picking on all men. We don't _all_ suck, and we definitely don't appreciate paying the price for the ones who do."

Ms. Traister stared at him for a long hard moment, her pursed lips turning white with repressed anger, before saying in an extremely calm voice, "If that's all, Mr. Mariano, I'm going to ask you to leave."

* * *

><p>"Wow, you <em>actually<em> called her out on the man-hating thing?" Lane asked. "I think I worship you."

Jess shrugged. "Every single guy in school has been hurting in the GPA since her husband left her. Everybody knows it, but nobody's had the balls to say it."

"Ladies and gentlemen, Jess Mariano." Lane pulled her backpack up a little more securely on her shoulder. "So, how much trouble do you think you'll be in?"

"Eh, probably not much. She knows I'm right. Frankly, as pissed as she was, I kinda think she'll appreciate someone pointing it out."

"What on earth would make you think that?"

Jess waved a hand in an almost dismissive gesture. "Ms. Traister's a good person, basically, and a good teacher. She honestly thought she's being fair and just the same as normal. She's been a pure bitch to everyone with a Y-chromosome for months, but I don't think she really realized why. She has no idea she's been deliberately singling out guys and grading them down. People get inside their heads sometimes and don't realize what's motivating their actions. If I get detention, fine. Whatever. I get detention, she gets a little perspective on her issues. I think she'll be better now."

"Well look at you, Master of Puppets," Lane quipped, looking at him in wonder. It never ceased to amaze her how perceptive and intuitive Jess could be. She wasn't sure where that insight came from. Some might have said it was just an introvert thing, but Lane wasn't exactly Miss Extroversion herself, and she couldn't honestly say she ever had much of that pure ability to read people that Jess possessed. Or the moxie to take such extreme actions based on it.

He rolled his eyes, but she could see the smirk tugging up the corner of his lips; if she knew him at all, it was brought on in equal measure by her compliment and by her subtle reference to his favorite band.

Jess stopped abruptly at the fence surrounding the Kim household.

"Aren't you coming in?"

He shook his head. "Nah. I was over yesterday and the day before. Three days in a row and your mother's head might explode."

"You make an excellent point."

"Besides, Luke has a bank meeting. He needs me covering at the diner this afternoon."

Lane nodded. "Okay. Enjoy your minimum wage," she said.

"Have fun at the hayride," he shot back, smirking.

"Die!"

* * *

><p>Chilton Preparatory was an extremely prestigious school, and it knew it. At least, if the massive wrought-iron fences, elaborately-detailed stonework, and giant gargoyles were anything to go by. It was a school for two kinds of students: geniuses, and the children of the extremely wealthy. Preferably both at once. Lorelai Gilmore had once been such a student, though she had been at Graten, not Chilton. Now, she supposed, the honor fell to another Lorelai.<p>

She knew that sitting there outside the school gates in her Jeep was borderline pathetic, but she couldn't help it.

Distantly, she heard the final bell of the day chime inside the building, and her fingers clenched on the steering wheel in anticipation. A minute passed, then two. Finally, students began streaming out the archway that lead into the school's interior courtyard, but Lorelai barely noticed them, even when the forerunners came whizzing down the drive past her in their cars that cost almost as much as her whole house. Her eyes were glued to the archway, waiting.

At last, she saw her. That other Lorelai Gilmore. The Lorelai with her father's high forehead, and her mother's blue-blue eyes, and her grandfather's head for numbers. She was in her plaid skirt and her saddle shoes and that stupid blue Chilton blazer, with what appeared to be a Gucci leather backpack slung over her shoulder. She'd gotten a haircut since Lorelai had last seen her over a week prior. Lorelai smiled. They had talked about this haircut. Her daughter had shown her a picture in a magazine. Instead of the long curtain of straight brown hair that fell almost to her waist that she had worn her entire life, Lorelai the Third had cropped her hair up almost to her shoulders and now wore it in soft curls. Combined with the new bangs that concealed her father's forehead, and the three inches she had shot up over the past year, it was almost like looking at herself at that age.

She was walking in the company of a tall, blonde boy who was carrying the books that wouldn't fit in that tiny, expensive backpack. He said something- Lorelai wished she could lipread- and Rory threw back her head and laughed, bumping him with her hip in a gesture that looked so easy and familiar, Lorelai wanted to cry. Once upon a time, _they_ had been that easy.

Lorelai shook her head. This wasn't doing her any good. She started the engine of her Jeep and backed away from the gates as surreptitiously as she could.

* * *

><p>Jess was in the middle of sweeping the storeroom when Luke pushed through the door, watching him with crossed arms. He determinedly ignored his uncle's gaze, even though he'd turned on that super-focused stare that Jess could feel on him even with his back turned. Once he decided an acceptable length of time had passed, he straightened up and asked, "Is there any chance you're gonna spit it out anytime soon?"<p>

Luke sighed. "I got an interesting call from Ms. Traister today."

"Look, whatever she said, it's probably true and I probably deserve it, so can we just get to the part where I'm grounded?"

"She wanted to thank you for being honest with her today."

That brought Jess up short. "What?"

"She said it's a rare talent, being able to read people like that and more importantly knowing how to profoundly influence them with few words."

Jess shrugged. "I'm just blunt," he said honestly. "Gee, Uncle Luke, wonder where I got _that_ from?"

"Shut it," Luke said fondly. "Anyway, she just called to thank you and tell you you'll be serving an hour's detention tomorrow after school. And yes, you are grounded."

"How long?"

"A week."

"Whatever happened to the punishment fitting the crime? Doesn't that seem a tad excessive for something that got me complimented?"

"So did that crap you pulled with the ducks at the Inn when you were twelve."

"Ah, but a compliment from a respected educator is a little different than a compliment from the Banyan brothers."

"That's true."

"How does three days sound?"

"Six."

"Four."

"Five."

"Four, plus my detention."

"Fine, you win."

Jess grinned. "Nice doing business with you. Now go do the entrepreneur thing, I've got this place covered."

* * *

><p>"I went to see Rory today."<p>

"On a Wednesday?"

"It wasn't a visit or anything. I just drove to Chilton and... saw her. It made me feel like a stalker."

"She's your daughter. I think you have every right to want to see your daughter."

"You think so?"

"I know so. It's a maternal right to love our children and miss them when they're not there."

Lorelai mused on that for a minute. It was something she had been feeling, but hadn't quite been able to put into words. That opportunity to have her own (occasionally chaotic) thoughts told back to her in words that were sometimes easier than her own, more than anything else, was why she had first agreed to come to these sessions when Sookie had suggested it a few years earlier. At first, she had scoffed when her friend had insisted that there was no shame in needing some counseling. However, when Sookie had confided that she had received therapy for several years during her high school and college years to learn to manage her chronic stress and panic attacks, Lorelai began to wonder if it might actually help her to speak to someone.

And that, in a nutshell, lead to Chanda.

Dr. Chanda Fleming, family counselor and social psychologist, had rapidly grown to be one of Lorelai's favorite people on the planet. Her preconceived image of a Freud-inspired stodge with an office like her father's and a squeaky leather couch who offered her Rorschach tests instead of answers had quickly been swept away by Chanda's green-painted space, open expressions, and judgment-free attitude. For going on two years she had visited Chanda's office in downtown Hartford once a week.

She was a sweet-faced woman in her mid- to late-forties, with gently curling blonde hair and bright green-hazel eyes. Lorelai had never seen her dressed in anything but long flowing skirts and loose-necked peasant tops, always colorful but subduedly so. There was something faintly gypsyish in her attire and in her manner, and yet Lorelai was sure she had never met a more rock-solid individual in her life, except perhaps Luke.

"Tell me about seeing Rory today," Chanda commanded gently.

Lorelai shifted in her seat, curling her legs up underneath her as she leaned a little more on the armrest of the lounge chair she occupied. "It was... strange. Sometimes when I see her, it's like looking at myself. The way she looks, the way she talks, even the way she moves is like looking at my sixteen-year-old self. Except I obviously had a huge pregnancy belly when I was her age, but that's a _whole_ other discussion..." She shook away the thought, grateful that her daughter didn't seem to be following her footsteps. "Most of the time, though, I don't even know who she is anymore."

"Why do you think that is?"

"I _know_ why that is," Lorelai said heatedly. "It's because I see her an hour or two every couple of weeks... what's that? That's _nothing_. When she was a baby, when it was just the two of us, I got to see everything. I knew if she woke up cranky, and if she had a new favorite color suddenly, and what she ate for breakfast, and I got to hear all the little details of her day. I was there for the little things."

"And now?"

"Now I get a vague overview of the big things, and that's about it. She'll tell me when she's been selected as a new reporter for her school paper, or if she's going to Europe so "sorry, Mom, I'm not gonna be able to come to Stars Hollow this summer" two years in a row, but I miss all the little things. I miss the best pieces of being a mom."

Chanda crossed her ankles and looked at Lorelai thoughtfully. "I suppose that doesn't feel very good, does it?"

"No, it doesn't."

"Time for the cliché question," Chanda said with a knowing grin. "You ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

"How _does_ it feel?"

Lorelai chuckled softly. "It feels... well, honestly, it feels really shitty."

"Why?"

Lorelai shrugged. "I don't know."

Chanda gave her that no-nonsense, vaguely maternal look that Lorelai had become familiar with over the years. "I think you do know. You tend to do this when something hurts, Lorelai. You lock it away and pretend it doesn't exist so that you can keep up this facade of being invincible, but you and I both know there's a lot more going on in there than you're willing to admit to."

"Yeah," Lorelai said quietly. "Fake Wonder Woman, that's me."

"It's not fake, Lorelai. You are a strong woman. You haven't yet learned how to be strong without all these defenses and walls you build. That's nothing to be ashamed of; everyone has defenses. Now, I want you to tell me why not seeing your daughter every day feels shitty."

"Because..."

Lorelai struggled with herself for a long moment. Chanda waited patiently, saying nothing, just watching her quietly.

"Because I didn't do anything _wrong_! I did all the things you're supposed to. I got a good job, I found a safe place for my daughter to grow up, I made sure she always knew she was loved and gave her everything I possibly could. I didn't do anything wrong, but they still took her away from me."

"And you think that's unfair."

"Damn right I think it's unfair! I was- I _could've_ been- a good mother!"

"Do you think you could have provided for your daughter better than your parents have?"

Lorelai's eyes dropped to her folded hands. It was a question they kept coming back to, and when it came up, that tended to be where she drew the line and declared the session over. Today, though, was different. Today, she had an answer. Today was special.

"I think so," she said quietly. "I... honestly, I haven't really been sure. I've asked myself that same question every day since they took her away. When I left my parents' house, I was so sure it was what was right, but when they declared me unfit to raise Rory and gave custody to Richard and Emily, I guess that just... that shook my foundation. It derailed everything I had ever believed about myself and my parents."

"Why?"

"Because from the minute I knew I was pregnant, I knew I would be a better mother than my own mother. I would make sure my daughter always knew I loved her, and not just that, that I cared about _her_. Not the daughter I wanted to have, but the daughter I actually had. My parents... they're not bad people, but that's not something they've ever understood. But suddenly here was this court, this blind justice declaring that it would be better for Rory if she was taken away from her mother, who loved her unconditionally."

"So you're telling me that you believe that you could have given Rory a better life, not in material things, but in affection and self-security?"

Lorelai nodded firmly. "Yes. I would have been better for her."

Chanda tapped one green-painted fingernail against her lips, studying Lorelai. "Tell me, Lorelai: I've been asking you that question for months, and you haven't been answering me. What makes today different?"

Lorelai smiled. "I told you last week that I appealed the custody decision again a few months ago, right?"

"Yes, you did."

"Well, I'm supposed to be hearing back from the people from the district court office any day now."

"So it's optimism that you're about to get your heart's desire that's brought this on?"

Lorelai shook her head. "No, it's just that speaking to the judge and going through all the old court documents has given me... perspective, I guess is what you'd call it?"

Chanda smiled warmly at her. "Well then, I'm happy to hear that. Let me know once you find out, won't you?"

"Of course."

"Is there anything else you'd like to talk about today? Anything else that's happened in your life lately?"

Lorelai briefly debated bringing up Kenneth and their split. Chanda had hinted that she wanted to understand Lorelai's serial dating habit, but Lorelai had been avoiding the issue for several months. Someday she would be ready to touch that, but for now she was perfectly happy with the way things were. She wasn't ready to take her head out of the sand, so to speak.

"Nope, nothing at all," Lorelai said. "But I do have to run a little early today, so that's probably a good thing."

Chanda nodded, rising from her seat. "Well then, I suppose that's our session for today. I'll see you at the same time next week."

* * *

><p>The Park brothers were quite possibly the most boring human beings on the face of the planet. Admittedly, Michael Park, the future proctologist whose bachelorhood and eligibility was the purpose of this entire exercise, might just have been as shy and uncomfortable as Lane was about being set up <em>by his parents<em>, but at this point she didn't particularly care. She was tired, she was cold, she had a bundle of sticks shoved up her butt, and she hadn't eaten anything but organic wheat germ muffins and a few bites of questionable cafeteria turkey since yesterday afternoon.

As the world's most awkwardly silent hayride made the turn past Miss Patty's studio, Lane's ears picked up the call of the mourning dove. It was a childhood code that had, over the course of long years of use, become an intrinsic part of her identity. She was instantly on the alert.

The hayride passed under the ancient, twisted oak tree that flanked the northeast corner of Miss Patty's, and as it did so a knotted rope dropped from its branches to swing past her shoulder. Without hesitation, Lane grabbed the rope and leapt from the back of the wagon, bracing her feet against one of the strategically-placed knots.

"Lane?" Michael called, getting to his feet despite the precarious lurching of the hayride.

She almost laughed at the incredulous look on his face. "Sorry, Michael!" she called to his slowly receding figure. "You're a really nice guy, but something's... come up."

The twin stares of the Park brothers were the last thing she saw as she began her expert ascent up the rope that had been so thoughtfully provided for her, struggling to contain her giggles of simultaneous mortification and delight. She silently apologized to Miss Driscoll for complaining about all those rope-climbing sessions she had endured during P.E., because it was certainly coming in handy now. Once she reached the thick knotted mass that comprised the lower branches, an olive-skinned hand descended to haul her up.

Attempting to steady herself on a branch, Lane choked out, "You are _insane!_" before dissolving into hysterical giggles.

"Yeah, but it's why you love me," Jess said with a smirk.

Lane just shook her head, still laughing.

"You looked like your little party down there could use a little livening up," he said as she began to control herself.

"You should have _seen_ the looks on their faces!" she spat out through another fit of laughter that burst through her pathetic attempt at self-control.

Jess rubbed a hand across his mouth, trying and failing to hide the fact that he was fighting a case of the giggles himself. "I actually had a pretty good view from up here. I thought the older brother was gonna drop dead of heart failure right there."

"He still might," Lane replied. "The Parks aren't known for their strong constitutions." Suddenly sobering, she said, "Mama's gonna kill me, you know."

"But won't it be worth it?" Jess teased. "She already hates me; you can just blame my _terrible_ influence if you need a scapegoat."

"Nah, I wouldn't do that to you. But... aren't you technically grounded right now?"

Jess shrugged. "Yeah, but Luke won't be back from his bank thing for at least another twenty minutes. I figured that was enough time to rescue you... and bring you pizza." He reached behind him and presented her with a flat square box that Lane had previously not noticed.

Reverently she took the box from his hands, flipped back the lid, and examined his offering. She looked up at him with wide eyes. "Stuffed crust?" she asked in quiet awe.

Jess favored her with a tiny smile and a shrug of his shoulders.

"You, Jess Mariano, are my hero."

* * *

><p>Sookie had thought she was the last one of the day staff left at the Independence. When she emerged from the kitchen, however, she found Lorelai sitting frozen in one of the wingback chairs in the lobby, her cell phone clutched tightly in one hand, the fingers of the other tapping energetically on her right thigh. Other than the rapid movement of those four digits, she was absolutely still, more motionless than Sookie had ever seen her.<p>

"Sweetie?" she asked, concerned.

The Gilmore girl didn't respond.

"Lorelai?" Sookie questioned, feeling panicked. "Is everything okay?"

Slowly, as if waking from a deep sleep, Lorelai turned her head to look at Sookie. "Yeah," she said dazedly. "Everything's okay. Amazing, even." The broadest smile in the history of broad smiles exploded in slow motion across her face. It was like a sunflower turning ever so gradually to the sun, as Lorelai bloomed from the winter rose Sookie had known for more than a decade into something else, something joyous and alive and sparkling with summertime.

"That was... that was the woman from the judge's office," she said simply, holding up the phone.

At first, Sookie didn't understand. Then the penny dropped. "You mean...?"

"YES!" Lorelai squealed, launching to her feet and throwing herself at her dear friend in a fierce, jumping, squealing hug of the kind that only true best friends can manage. "My appeal was accepted! Rory's coming to live in Stars Hollow!"

Sookie squeezed her friend back with all her might, celebrating right along with her and with every bit as much enthusiasm. "Oh, honey, I'm so happy for you! This is so, so great! I'm... I... I just..." She stepped back, fanning at her eyes in an attempt to stop the tears gathering there from falling. "You just deserve this so damn much. You've worked so _hard_ to get yourself to a place where you can make a great home for her, and it's all so... Oh I'm so happy!"

Lorelai laughed and enveloped Sookie in another bone-crushing hug, not caring at all that Sookie was weeping all over her silk blouse. "Thank you, Sook," she said softly. "I couldn't have done it without you."

At that, Sookie cried harder, and wrenched herself out of Lorelai's embrace. "Oh, none of that now!" she exclaimed, wiping at her eyes. "You're gonna make me bawl like a baby!" When Lorelai opened her mouth to point out the obvious, Sookie let out a tear-strangled giggle and pointed a warning finger at her. "Don't say a word!"

"Am I allowed to say that I am so sorry for snapping at you earlier?"

"I totally understand. You were under a lot of stress from this appeal thing hanging over your head."

"There's still no excuse for being rude to you. That's not okay."

Sookie waved a hand dismissively, a sure sign that it was forgotten. "Don't worry about it. All is forgiven." She clapped her hands together. "Okay, this calls for celebration. Luke's?"

"Luke's!"

"To Luke's it is!"

"To Luke's!"

* * *

><p>"I'm just so happy for you," Sookie gushed for what was easily the twentieth time since Lorelai had broken the news to her. They were seated at their usual table by the window at Luke's, waiting for the titular proprietor to finish serving Andrew and his son, who were sitting at one of the tables past the left end of the counter.<p>

Just as Luke turned away from his other customers, the bells over the door chimed a merry announcement of the presence of his nephew.

"And where've you been?" Luke demanded.

"Around," Jess said nonchalantly, every hair on his head declaring that he was just being difficult to drive his uncle up the wall. It was a habit he'd learned from Lorelai.

Luke responded by smacking Jess gently upside the head with his order pad.

"Alright, you. You're officially on dish duty for a week."

"Gee, Uncle Luke, what about the baby-soft skin on my hands?"

"Don't be a smartass."

Jess grinned at his uncle to let him know he was only teasing, and retreated behind the counter.

After shooting his nephew a frustrated glare that lacked any real venom behind it, Luke proceeded over to where Lorelai and Sookie were sitting, grinning at each other like twin Cheshire Cats. Lorelai looked up and unexpectedly found herself stunned right out of her euphoric good mood and into fumbling silence.

Luke was still dressed from the meeting he had returned from not fifteen minutes earlier, in a blue button-down shirt and nice slacks, bare-headed for once. Lorelai couldn't help but notice that his eyes were blue. Had she ever noticed that before? They weren't Gilmore blue, they were more subtle than that. You could look at him from a distance for years but if you got close enough, suddenly, _wham!_ She supposed she'd known his eyes were blue, but something about the dim late-evening lighting of the diner and the color of his shirt were making them pop in a way she'd never seen before. Combined with his clean-shaven cheeks, his admittedly killer eyelashes and the fact that she was pretty sure this was the first time she'd seen him sans baseball cap...

She was staring. She was ogling. She was ogling... Luke.

_OH MY GOD, GILMORE, SAY SOMETHING!_

"Wow," she managed to stutter out. "You look nice. R-really... nice."

"I, uh, had a meeting at the bank earlier. They... like collars," he said, pulling absentmindedly at the aforementioned collar. With a shy smile, he offered, "You look nice, too."

Lorelai wasn't entirely sure in the dim lighting, but she was pretty sure Luke Danes was blushing. She felt herself turning a little pink as well and glanced down, both to hide her flushing face and to confirm what she was wearing- her pretty royal blue blouse and the gray flippy skirt. She made a note to wear this particular outfit more often, and decided to chalk it up to female vanity.

"Thanks," she murmured. Once she was sure she could make eye contact again without the color of her cheeks revealing how much his compliment had flattered her, she looked back up at him.

"So what'll you have?" he asked, still smiling just a little.

"Coffee. In a vat," she replied, smiling innocently in response to his dark look.

"Ooh, and celebration pie!" Sookie chimed in.

Luke looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "What are you celebrating?"

Sookie was still unable to contain her ear-to-ear grin. "Lorelai's just been given custody of Rory!" she exclaimed, practically vibrating in her seat.

Immediately, Luke's face broke out into the widest smile Lorelai had ever seen him wear as he looked back to her. "Wow, really? That's... that's great. That's amazing! Congratulations, Lorelai. You- you must be over the moon!"

She nodded, unable to speak, overwhelmed by the characteristically gruff man's obvious outpouring of happiness.

"Tell you what," he said, "Tonight, order anything you want. On the house."

Finding her voice, she said, "Thanks, Luke."

"I'll get your coffee while you decide on pie," he said with a knowing look. He headed back behind the counter. Lorelai watched him go.

Turning back to Sookie, she whispered in an awed tone, "Behold the healing powers of a bath!"

"Never mind that," Sookie squealed, for once too excited to pounce on any Luke-related comments Lorelai made. "When's Rory moving in? Is she gonna change schools? Have you talked to her, yet?"

"Whoa, whoa, Sookie! Hold your horses...!" Lorelai exclaimed, laughing a little at her friend's enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, behind the counter, Luke was pouring two cups of coffee into his biggest mugs, humming happily as he did so. Suddenly, he caught his nephew's eye, realized what he was doing and stopped abruptly. Jess shot him an amused look.

"Say nothing!" Luke cautioned, directing a warning finger and a murderous look in his nephew's direction.

Jess threw up his hands in a gesture of innocence. "I wasn't doing anything," he said, his mouth twisting up in a sort of smirk as he restrained the temptation to laugh out loud.

Luke maintained his death glare for a few seconds more, then his face relaxed and he chuckled briefly at himself. He handed Jess a rag. "Dishes. Now," he said, jerking his head in the direction of the kitchen.

Jess grinned back at him. "Whatever you say, Uncle Luke."

* * *

><p><strong>AN2-** I originally had a very, very different vision for this fic. Maybe someday I'll tell you all the details of How It Was Originally Supposed To Go, but for now, let me just say this. Vienna Teng basically wrote this fic for me. Well, not really, because I'm pretty sure she's chilling in San Francisco writing even more awesome music. But my original plan for Lorelai and Rory was wildly altered by her song "Daughter." And "Between" shifted my entire concept of Lorelai's conversation about her many relationships with Sookie. So what I'm saying here is... if you don't know Vienna Teng (and a sad number of people don't), GO OUT AND LISTEN TO HER ALBUMS. She's a brilliant lyricist, a brilliant songwriter, and her voice is quite beautiful, which is tragically rare in contemporary music.

...I'm pretty sure Vienna should pay me some kind of promoter's fee for the number of Author's Notes I write that basically turn into rants about how much I depend on her music for inspiration. But I speak no words that aren't true.


	4. The Mythical Lorelai Gilmore

**A/N-** Firstly, sorry. I meant to have this posted by Tuesday or Wednesday, but I'm back at university for another semester of having a tiny Korean woman who makes Lane look like an Amazon beat musical knowledge into my brain, and things got a little busy. Throw in the fact that this is one of those episodes which is deviating pretty dramatically from the original (meaning I have to think harder- horrors!), and you get a slower update than I had hoped. I'm going to try really, _really_ hard to have a new chapter of this posted every other week from here on out, but I can't make promises, as my schedule is very fluid.

Secondly... Wow. This fic hasn't gotten a huge response, but the response it _has_ gotten has been so enthusiastic that I feel like I've gotten a hundred gazillion reviews. Thank you all for your interest/reviews/favorites/other general support-like actions; it means so much to me because I took a gamble on this story and the interest it's garnered makes it really worth it!

Thirdly, Rory is going to be referred to as Lorelai a large amount of the time (at least at the beginning... make of that what you will...), but when she and Lorelai the Second are in the same room, we're reverting to Rory so that it's possible to keep it all straight. Speaking as a girl who inherited her mother's name (no, I'm not kidding at all), it can get rather confusing.

* * *

><p>Episode 1x02: The Mythical Lorelai Gilmore<p>

_"And no one sings me lullabies,  
>And no one makes me close my eyes,<br>So I throw the windows wide  
>And call to you across the sky."<br>-Pink Floyd_

* * *

><p>Lane was stubborn enough that she would never, ever admit that her mother was actually right about something. Strictly speaking, though, the Bible wasn't composed of her mother's words. Admitting that John the Apostle had some very good points wasn't technically conceding a victory to Mama Kim. All was still right in her world.<p>

A soft rapping at her window made Lane look up. A grin crossed her face as she saw Jess kneeling on the little strip of roof outside her second-story bedroom, holding a bag in his left hand and looking at her expectantly.

She ran across the room and threw up the window. "Did you get them?" she asked excitedly.

Jess nodded. "XTC, Apple Venus, Volume 2. Nico, Chelsea Girl. The Moody Blues, Days of Future Passed. Led Zeppelin IV." Reaching into the bag, he pulled out the CDs one by one as he named them.

"Where's Dookie?" Lane asked.

Jess raised an eyebrow. "I flat-out refuse to touch that so-called album with a ten-foot pole."

"Oh, come on, Jess!" she protested. "You have _got_ to get over this whole allergic-to-the-mainstream thing you've got going on. It's really not attractive on you. Green Day isn't strictly my taste either, but if you're gonna build a comprehensive collection of mankind's entire recorded history of musical expression, sometimes you have to include the things you don't personally enjoy."

"Fine," Jess agreed with a long-suffering sigh. "I'll pick it up for you on Monday. But you owe me a copy of Hatful of Hollow for this."

"I'll fire up the CD burner."

Footsteps could be heard on the stairs at that moment, and the distinctive call of "Lane!" signaled the approach of Mrs. Kim.

"I'm gone!" Jess hissed, and he vanished from sight around the corner of the house, while Lane pulled the window closed and returned quickly to the Fourth Gospel.

* * *

><p>Lorelai sat in the gazebo watching rehearsal at Miss Patty's, the general comings and goings of the townspeople, and the Banyan boys chasing a terrified Kirk around the square, waving glow-sticks and calling taunts after Stars Hollow's very own unique answer to the stereotypical village idiot. A smile graced her face as she watched her town go about its business.<p>

This place had been her home for fifteen years. She had grown up here. She'd experienced the hardest times, the highest joys, and the greatest heartbreak of her life here. This town had folded her in like a warm safety net waiting to catch her in her most desperate time, and born witness to her life. Here were her neighbors, here were her friends, here was her family, her _true_ family. And soon enough, here her daughter would be, too.

"Mom?"

She turned her head to see Rory standing at the top of the gazebo steps, wearing her Chilton uniform and looking more beautiful and grown-up than ever.

"Hey, Sweetie," she said warmly to her daughter.

"Mom, what were you thinking, bringing me here?"

"What?"

That little angel-face twisted up in a grimace. "I hate it here. I don't want to live here."

"What? Why?" Lorelai asked in disbelief.

Rory frowned, looking disturbingly like Emily when she did so. "These people are all _insane_," she said, sounding as much like Emily as she looked. "No one here has any sense of taste or decorum! People are running about like animals and some awful man in a disgusting pilled-up cardigan practically assaulted me. Oh, and that coffee you've been raving about for years? It tastes weak and chemical!"

"Rory, what on earth-?"

"My name is _not_ Rory, it's _Lorelai!_"

"I-"

The ringing of the phone jolted her awake. Lorelai shot upright, clutching her chest and breathing as hard as if she had been running. Sweat poured off of her and she felt almost feverish. It took her several seconds to recognize the sound of the telephone for what it was. By the time she did, it was on the fourth and final ring before the machine would pick up, and she lunged for it, throwing herself right off the bed in the act. She groaned in pain, bringing the phone up to her ear.

"Hello?" she answered.

"Lorelai, where are you?" Sookie's breathless voice asked on the other end of the line.

Lorelai's head dropped tiredly back against the floor with a heavy thud. "Having horrible nightmares," she responded dully.

"Why aren't you at work?"

"Because it's a quarter to six?" Lorelai suggested sarcastically.

"No it's not!" Sookie said. "It's almost ten-thirty!"

Lorelai shook her head. "It can't be. I set my alarm for a quarter to six, so if it hasn't gone off yet, it-"

"Lorelai! It is _ten twenty-four!_" Sookie said.

Struggling into a sitting position with much flailing of arms, Lorelai managed to reach up to grab her fuzzy blue alarm clock. "Oh my god, it's ten twenty-four!" she cried, suddenly panicked. "How the hell did this happen?"

"Look, don't worry about it. Michel's got the desk covered, and it's a pretty slow day."

"Ugh," Lorelai groaned, feeling her heart rate slowly returning to normal. "Sorry, Sook. Look, just give me time to get dressed and pick up my stuff from the dry cleaner and I'll be in by noon. I'm sorry. I _hate_ my stupid alarm clock..."

"I told you that was a really bad impulse buy," Sookie said with a little giggle. "I'm just glad it was alarm clock failure. I kept picturing you lying at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck because you were trying to go down them and put your shoes on at the same time again."

"Once. I did that once!" Lorelai protested.

"It only takes once," Sookie said solemnly.

Lorelai shook her head tiredly. "Stairs _then_ shoes from now on, I promise. Sorry for worrying you. I'll be there in an hour and a half."

"Okay, Sweetie."

Lorelai hung up and with another heavy groan, she dropped her head back against the bedframe at her back. "That is the last time I ever buy anything because it's furry," she said to herself.

* * *

><p>Chemistry was the one and only class that Lane had with Jess this semester, and she was very glad of that. Not the fact that she only had one class with her oldest friend, but the fact that she had the hardest- and most snooze-worthy- subject known to man with possibly the smartest person she had ever met. Instant study buddy. Not that Jess wouldn't have helped her with her homework anyway, but it was just that much easier when he happened to be in the same class, because then she didn't run the risk of being partnered up with some loser like Chuck Presby for lab exams.<p>

Unless, of course, Jess happened to be MIA. Such as right now. The process of testing solutions of various metals to see what color they turned the flames of a bunsen burner would have been significantly improved with Jess there making sarcastic comments and using way too much of the copper solution because it was the prettiest color (not that he would admit that was why he was doing it). Unfortunately, Jess was not present.

Lane glared at Chuck Presby, who was inching steadily around the shared table away from his equally dim-witted lab partner in an attempt to get a look at her paper.

And suddenly, Jess _was_ present, just like that. He slid in through the door without a sound, snatched a pair of lab goggles and put them on with a _lassaiz faire_ that suggested they were the height of male fashion rather than the dorkiest eyewear since the invention of Groucho glasses, and slipped over to Lane's table on near-silent feet.

"Where have you been?" Lane hissed. "Class started 15 minutes ago! I had to lie to Miss Winston and tell her you went to the nurse's office. I've been completely freaking out!"

"Chill," he said easily. "Just a little detour. Thanks for covering for me."

Lane knew that tone of voice. Jess was a good-hearted guy, much like his uncle, but he did have a tendency toward restlessness. When Jess got bored, it rarely ended quietly. If ever Lane had needed proof of God's existence, she had gotten it in the form of her mother miraculously never hearing about any of Jess's minor infractions. It would undoubtedly have been the end of their association if she had gotten wind of the time Jess taped strips of black paper over the outsides of every ground-floor window of Stars Hollow Middle School to simulate prison bars, or the Great Lilac Beheading Of '95.

"Jess," she said warningly.

He grinned at her. "Don't worry. It's nothing bad, I promise."

"I'll believe it when I see it," she replied.

* * *

><p>Forty minutes after Sookie's wakeup call, Lorelai was showered and dressed. Sort of. All of her good business suits were at the dry cleaner's, and the rest of her professional-looking clothes that didn't require such careful handling were either in the laundry machine or really needed to be. She was left with the little black skirt that was a bit too short because she'd bought it when she was seventeen and easily three inches shorter but which she couldn't bring herself to get rid of, and a pink satin blouse with short sleeves that was a little tighter than she would ordinarily put on for work but which was still perfectly decent for daytime wear.<p>

She glanced at the clock. Well, she was already so ridiculously late to work that there didn't seem to be much point in rushing. Lunch at Luke's seemed like a good idea. She headed out of the house and set off in the direction of the town square.

As she passed the dance studio, Miss Patty was busy directing a class of eight- and nine-year-olds wielding tasseled batons.

"Visualize, ladies! It's the Thanksgiving Day parade, you're standing on Fifth Avenue, there's a hundred beautiful boys marching in place behind you, and there you are! You are out in front with your fabulous legs and your perfect tush, and your baton is on fire and the crowd goes nuts!" Abandoning her own baton, Patty declared abruptly, "Okay, cookie time."

She caught sight of Lorelai making her beeline for Luke's and called, "Lorelai, hi!"

"Hey Patty," Lorelai called back, pausing in her pursuit of caffeine for just a moment.

Patty sashayed down the steps to meet her. "So, tell me, dear," she said eagerly, "Is it true?"

"Is what true?"

"Well, that you've been given custody of your daughter, of course!" Patty exclaimed. Leaning in conspiratorially, she added, "I had it from Jackson Belleville, who says he heard it from Sookie on Friday, so I assume it's the truth, but I wanted to hear it from the source. Is Lorelai coming to live with you?"

Lorelai forced up a bright smile, the funk her disturbing dream and her late start had put her in still hanging over her. "Yes, I've been granted custody," she said.

"She must be delighted!" Patty said warmly.

"I haven't actually talked to her yet," Lorelai said cautiously. "It's still so fresh..."

Patty waved a hand airily. "Oh, I'm sure she's absolutely ecstatic about it," she said, brushing off the hesitation she must have sensed in Lorelai. "She was always such a sweet girl. I remember when she used to visit for a month or two during the summers..." A reminiscent smile spread over her face. "Always so nice to everyone, such an absolute doll. But she hasn't visited Stars Hollow in... what is it? Two, three years?"

"Not since she was thirteen," Lorelai confirmed. "My parents wanted her to see Europe. And given the choice between Stars Hollow and Paris-" She trailed away.

Not noticing- or more likely overlooking- Lorelai's wistful, worried expression, Patty grinned. "Given the choice, what teenage girl wouldn't choose Paris?" she finished for her. "Ah, I understand. France is a country for the young."

Lorelai nodded. "And Liam Neeson."

"Naturally. But she'll be here now, and that's what counts." Again, Patty looked at her with a dreamy, contented expression. "I'm so glad Lorelai will be back in the Hollow. Such a sweet girl... what was that darling nickname you used to have for her?"

"Rory. We used to call her Rory."

Patty nodded. "Yes, that's right."

"Nobody but me has called her Rory for years, though."

"Hm. Shame. It seemed to suit her."

Lorelai couldn't help but agree.

A pair of tiny ballerinas, totally without clothing, went shrieking past the open doors of the studio. The noise caused Miss Patty to turn, and upon spying her nude charges, she threw up her hands in frustration. "Naked girls? Oh no no no, that won't do!" she exclaimed, rushing up the steps. She tossed a brief, "Bye, Lorelai!" over her shoulder before hurrying in the direction the mini majorettes had gone.

With a shake of her head, Lorelai turned and resumed her journey to Luke's.

* * *

><p>When she reached her destination, Lorelai spotted Luke at the counter attempting to repair his toaster. She headed for him, feeling a desperate need for a decent sparring match with Luke. Patty's subtle but direct assurances had not done much to alleviate her somber mood, but Lorelai had found that trading barbs with Luke was a surefire route to All Is Right In The World.<p>

She all but fell onto a stool and laid her head on the counter with a mournful groan.

"Get your face off the counter," Luke said dryly. "People eat there."

"I would if I could, but I am having the weirdest morning ever and if I move, my head may explode." She flopped her head to one side so that she could catch a glimpse of him. "Coffee?" she asked plaintively.

"There's no coffee," he said.

"That's not funny!" she said, sitting up rapidly enough to make her dizzy.

He raised his eyebrow. "Now was that so hard?" he asked, indicating her upright position with a tilt of his head.

"You should never joke about coffee, Luke," she said solemnly. "It makes me do crazy things, take risks with my health..."

He shrugged. "I can give you herbal tea."

"This is not an herbal tea morning. This is a _coffee_ morning!" she protested, slapping a hand on the counter.

"Every morning for you is a coffee morning."

"This is a jumbo coffee morning! I need coffee in an IV."

Keeping his head carefully turned away, he replied gruffly, "I can give you tea and a balance bar."

"Please, _please_ tell me you're kidding!"

There was a long hesitation, during which Lorelai became very afraid Luke wasn't messing with her this time. Then he made the mistake of glancing up and meeting her eyes and she could actually see his resolve draining away. "I'm kidding," he said on a sigh.

She groaned inwardly. This was the third attempt this week. "You're sick."

"Yep."

"You're a sadist. You're a fiend!" Luke returned from the kitchen, where he had retreated to retrieve the coffee pot he had hidden away, and Lorelai immediately changed her tune. "You're pretty," she said flirtatiously.

"For here or to go?" he asked dryly.

"To go," she responded immediately.

Luke sighed again. "You wanna know what this stuff does to your central nervous system?"

"Ooh, do you have a chart? 'Cause I love charts!"

He rolled his eyes. "Forget it. Kill yourself." Sliding the freshly poured coffee across the counter to her, he asked, "So what happened this morning that was so awful?"

Lorelai wasn't sure how much to tell him. She had a habit of keeping her darkest fears and concerns carefully tucked away in her own mind (or, more recently, confided only to Chanda), but at the same time... it was Luke. "I overslept," she said. "And... I had this weird dream."

"The Kirk vs. Muhammad Ali one again?" Luke guessed.

She shook her head. "No. It was about Ro- Lorelai. I dunno, it's all fuzzy now. But whatever it was, it's put me in a funk."

Luke's expression, which had previously been his trademark stone wall of gruff indifference, faded into a sympathetic grimace. "Dreams can do that," he said.

"And no amount of banging my head on the wall seems to help."

"Try an anvil, I've heard they work wonders."

Lorelai smiled. She still felt the dark cloud of unarticulated worry hovering around the edges of her thoughts, like a heavy weight sitting in her chest, but Luke's dry sarcasm once again proved a temporary fix for all her woes. Or maybe it was the coffee. Sometimes it was hard to tell. Whatever the cause, she felt a little better.

He indicated the door with a jerk of his chin. "Go on, take your death juice and go to work. Sookie's probably having some kind of meltdown that you're not there." She wasn't sure, but she thought that just maybe, he was smiling a little bit as well.

"More than likely," Lorelai agreed, thinking back on her friend's almost-panic-attack on the phone that morning. "Thanks, Luke."

She slid a dollar across the counter at him and headed for the door.

"Next time, you're getting tea!" he called to her retreating form.

"No tip for you!" she cried in a blatantly false, vaguely Baltic accent.

* * *

><p>She should have expected it. She really, <em>really<em> should have. But the pandemonium reigning when Lane arrived in the cafeteria for lunch was a complete surprise. A huge crowd of students were clustered in the center of the open space, forming a tidy little semi-circle that was collectively giggling and pointing at whatever it was they had surrounded.

"What did you do?" she asked immediately, not even bothering to look at Jess, who was tailing behind her.

"What makes you think _I_ did anything?" he asked pleasantly.

Before either of them could say another word, Principal Merton emerged apparently out of nowhere. "Mr. Mariano," he intoned dryly. "Would you be so kind as to join me in my office?"

"Sure thing, Mr. Merton," Jess responded in an equally sarcastic voice.

Lane watched for a moment as her best friend was all but led away by the elbow, then made her way to the crowd of students and peered over Jill Allen's shoulder to examine Jess's handiwork. She couldn't restrain a laugh of her own. Jess had chalked down an outline of a body, CSI-style, complete with a red-painted rolling pin standing in as the blunt-trauma murder weapon, and surrounded the whole area with police tape.

* * *

><p>Principal Merton sank heavily into his desk chair with a resigned sigh. "Mr. Mariano, I thought we had finished with these juvenile pranks of yours after that conversation you and I had when you were in middle school."<p>

"The prison-bar incident of '97," Jess agreed mildly, bearing an expression of great benevolent wisdom on his young face. "I remember."

"I want to remind you of the same thing I told you then. You're a bright young man, Jess. You have a great deal of potential and an impressive future ahead of you. I don't want to see you spoil that future if one of these stunts of yours gets out of hand. I understand wanting to create a bit of a stir now and then. That's natural at your age, and we live in a very small community with very little to engage someone of your interests and talent. However, this cannot continue, Jess. I'm going to have to issue you three weeks' detention."

There was a long silence during which Jess stared at the principal, and he stared back.

Then, Jess responded, "Tell me, what rules have I broken?"

"What?"

"Answer me that, Principal Merton. What rules have I actually broken?"

"None, as such."

Jess nodded. "Exactly. There is nothing in the Stars Hollow High code of conduct that forbids anything I have ever done. I have obeyed the letter of the law. I'll be the first person to admit that I'm not exactly sticking to the _spirit_, but not once have I ever broken any school rules. Well, admittedly, you might be able to call speaking out to Ms. Traister last week insubordination, but I've apologized and served my time, and she and I have come to an understanding."

Principal Merton pursed his lips. "Your logic is, as usual, irrefutable, but I think you are failing to understand the larger lesson here, Mr. Mariano."

Jess frowned, but said nothing.

"I would like to arrange a meeting with your guardian."

That prompted an immediate reaction. "Do we really have to get Luke involved?" he asked, sitting forward in his chair with a worried look on his face.

"Yes, I think we do," Principal Merton said firmly. "There are some options I would like to discuss with him."

"Like _what?_" Jess asked incredulously.

"That is between your uncle and myself."

Jess heaved a heavy sigh. "Set it up," he said tiredly. "You won't be able to reach him on the home phone until after seven, at the latest, but you can leave a message on the machine." At the principal's raised eyebrow, Jess said, "I won't erase it. Scouts honor." He held up the traditional three-finger salute with an air of utmost irony.

* * *

><p>"Lorelai! Lorelai, come here for a moment!" The voice of Emily Gilmore echoed through the confines of the expansive mansion on Tower Avenue.<p>

Lorelai Gilmore the Third didn't initially hear her grandmother calling, so wrapped up was she in the thick book she had perched on her chest as she reclined on her bed. After the third time her name rang up the hallway, she tucked the silken bookmark into place and closed the leather-bound tome with a regretful sigh. "Just a moment!" she called out, rolling over uncomfortably and swinging her gangly teenager's legs off the edge of her bed, landing with a thunk on the hardwood floor. She was still in her Chilton uniform, having been too absorbed in _The Three Musketeers_ when she arrived home to bother changing.

She skittered down the hallway to the stairs, then slowed to an easy and sedate stride, descending with more ladylike grace than she had shown in her awkward tumble off her bed.

"What is it?" she asked, finding her grandmother waiting for her in the sitting room.

Emily patted the settee, indicating that Lorelai ought to join her. "Take a seat, dear," she said. Lorelai noted that she had the Lorelai Face on, the expression that only came across her face after dealing with her mother, Lorelai the Second.

Lorelai obliged. "Is something wrong?" she asked hesitantly.

Emily sighed. "I spoke with your mother on the phone yesterday," she said.

Yep. Definitely the Lorelai Face.

"Oh."

"As I'm sure you recall, your mother recently filed an appeal against your current custody arrangements."

And suddenly Lorelai wasn't just feeling the usual worry over the Lorelai Face, she was suddenly very apprehensive about whatever it was her grandmother was about to tell her. "Yes, I knew that. What about it?"

Emily pursed her lips. "It seems that the court has evaluated her situation and yours, and elected to grant your mother full custody of you."

Lorelai's eyes widened. "What?" she breathed out.

Emily shook her head, restraining her own thoughts on the matter. To be perfectly frank, she had been furious when the notice from the judge's office had been phoned in, and she had been still more furious when she spoke with her on the phone the previous afternoon. For her granddaughter's sake, however, she would do her best to be calm. It had been made clear to her that she and Richard had as little choice in this matter as Lorelai had been given ten years previously. The law had spoken, and unless Rory herself put up any strenuous objections, that was that. She was not at all pleased about it, and there had been quite a long, loud "discussion" with Judge Bryant after she had been notified of the court's decision, but she had been told in strictest terms that this was not something she could fight.

And so, Emily Gilmore was trying something different: she was trying to make the best of it.

For the past decade, she had made raising Lorelai properly her first priority. If she did say so herself, she had succeeded rather magnificently. Lorelai was a sweet-tempered, compliant creature, wholly different from her vibrant and incorrigible mother. Emily was confident that ten years of her own good influence could not be undone by the three years Lorelai would have to work on her before she went off to school. It wasn't an ideal situation, but her granddaughter was an intelligent, level-headed girl of good breeding. Even under her mother's unruly influence, her good sense would serve her well.

"I'm afraid that's the fact of the matter," Emily said coolly. "I received notification from the district courts office."

Lorelai's expression was hard to read. "Grandpa said her appeal wasn't a big deal," she said quietly, an almost accusatory tone in her voice. "You said this wasn't the first time she tried to get custody of me."

"It isn't," Emily confirmed. "But apparently her financial situation has improved significantly since the last time Child Protective Services reviewed her." She had to physically restrain herself from clucking her tongue disparagingly.

Lorelai fidgeted with her hands in her lap and chewed her lips thoughtfully for a long moment, a rather unattractive habit that Emily had tried to correct the way she had her granddaughter's formerly atrocious posture, but her efforts in this particular instance had been in vain. Finally, she turned those vividly blue eyes back to her grandmother and asked, "Am I going to have to change schools?"

"Heavens, no! Lorelai, your mother is many things, among them flighty and irresponsible, but she is certainly not foolhardy. She knows very well your educational aspirations, and I am sure that she will respect that. She knows how important Chilton is for you to get into a good university."

Lorelai nodded in acceptance of her grandmother's reassurance, and sat in quiet thoughtfulness for another several moments.

"Okay," she said quietly, after some time. "I guess... it is what it is, right?"

Emily sniffed in dissatisfaction. "So it would appear," she said coolly.

"When do I have to move?"

"Saturday."

"Is Mom coming over before then?"

"Yes. She said she was planning on dropping by this afternoon."

Lorelai got to her feet decisively. "I have _so_ much work to do! I have to get my things organized," she said, obviously full of some kind of powerful emotion but just unwilling to let her grandmother see it that she managed to pull up a smile from somewhere.

As Lorelai all but ran for the stairs, Emily was once again struck by the contrast to her mother. Lorelai the Second had been full of fire and vinegar more often than not, and when she was, she'd never had any problem letting everyone know it. Lorelai the Third, by contrast, was much more adept at keeping her violent spurts of emotion (if, indeed, she had any; sometimes it was hard to tell with that girl), so compliant and calm. It was like night and day with all the differences in raising the pair of them.

* * *

><p>The feel-good attitude Luke had provided her with lasted only as long as the coffee he had sent her to work with. After it had faded, she did her best to ignore the funny churning in her head and heart. She was being ridiculous. She <em>knew<em> she was being ridiculous... maybe. No, she _was_. Still, she couldn't seem to convince herself to really believe that. Her worries were unfounded. But try telling that to her subconscious. She held out as long as she could, but eventually she knew that she wasn't going to be able to focus on her work until she talked this out with someone.

Lorelai slipped into the kitchen around three o'clock. She almost addressed Sookie immediately, but found herself getting drawn into watching her latest argument with the produce guy.

"They're smaller than the last batch," Sookie declared, holding up a peach.

"No, they're not," Jackson replied tiredly.

"Smaller means watery, no good peach taste," she said cautioningly.

"No, there's plenty of peach taste because they're, you know, _peaches_," Jackson shot back.

"What about the ones at the bottom?" she wondered aloud.

Jackson threw up his hands and rolled his eyes in annoyance. "Oh, great," he said. "No, be sure to check 'em all. Thaaaat's it. Give every last one of 'em a nice good squeeze! You wouldn't want to actually leave me one that I can sell to somebody else! No, wait a minute, you missed one. Now, I'm not gonna tell you which one it is, I'm just gonna let your impeccably good radar- _There_ it is!"

Sookie had single-mindedly ignored him throughout this monologue, studying the peach she had retrieved from the crate intently.

At this point, Lorelai decided it was time to speak up. "Hey, Sook? You got a minute?"

"Not really," her distracted chef replied. "I'm going to have to re-evaluate the _entire_ dinner menu because the entire plan was built to revolve around ducks with my fabulous peach glazing, only _someone_ didn't see fit to bring me any decent peaches I can actually use to _make_ the glaze!"

"Hey!" Jackson cried, affronted.

Lorelai's face fell. "Oh. Okay. I'll leave you to it," she said, backing away from the scene.

Sookie looked up and spotted the deeply-etched worry lines wrinkling up her friend's brow, and reevaluated her short-term priorities. "Honey, what is it?" she asked.

Lorelai shook her head. "Not important. I'm being silly."

Sookie grabbed her hand and pulled her to a corner of the kitchen out of earshot of Jackson and the rest of her staff. "Anything that has you looking like that isn't silliness, Lorelai," she said firmly. "What's bothering you?"

"I just... I'm worried about bringing Rory to live here."

Sookie's eyebrows shot up. "But you've been over the moon all weekend! What's happened?"

"I know, I know. But she hasn't been to the Hollow in years! When she was a little kid, she still loved coming here. Stars Hollow was like a fairytale escape from all the boring Hartford stuff. But as she's gotten older, she's started to like the boring Hartford stuff more."

"Sweetie, she's gonna love living here full-time," she tried to reassure her.

"But what if she doesn't?"

"She _will_," Sookie said firmly. "You're being paranoid. I promise, she'll love being back here. This is home, no matter where she's been living."

Lorelai thought about that. When she had first stumbled into Stars Hollow, quite by chance all those years ago, it had instantly felt like home to her. Rory had said things along those lines when she visited as a young girl as well. This place might not be Rory's permanent address- yet, anyway- but Sookie had a point. It did seem to be her "heart home" as much as it was to Lorelai herself.

"Thanks, Sookie," she said warmly. "I'll let you get back to the ducks, okay?"

Sookie was hardly paying attention, having already returned her attention to Jackson and his sub-standard peaches. She only had time to give Lorelai a half-wave as she started rolling a piece of watery fruit across the floor.

Much as Luke's coffee and gruff attempts at reassurance had earlier, Lorelai felt that Sookie's advice had loosened a tangle or two in the tight knot of worry that was sitting in her chest. Feeling that she would be able to fully concentrate on her job again, Lorelai left the kitchen with a lighter heart.

* * *

><p>"DuGrey home, Oppressed One speaking."<p>

"Tristan? It's me."

"Hey, Lore. What's up?"

Lorelai lay flat across the width of her bed, staring at her open closet doors and the careful system of organization she had perfected over the years. "I don't think I can hang out tonight," she said shortly.

"Why not?"

"Something came up."

"Can't you get out of it?" he pleaded.

"Don't think so."

Tristan DuGrey was, in effect, Lorelai's best friend. They had gone through elementary school together, and the close social ties between their grandparents had resulted in both of them attending the same middle school, and now Chilton. She had been his comfort and his confidante when the stifling coldness of his home life was driving him to the point of insanity, and he had been her solace when she was missing her mother so much it hurt. He was her secret-keeper, she was his pressure-valve. Sometimes, Lorelai thought there might be more than friendship between them, especially lately, but she couldn't be entirely sure.

"What is this thing that you can't get out of?" he asked.

She sighed. "My mom is coming to dinner."

"On a Monday?" he asked, clearly surprised. He knew the every-other-Tuesday routine as well as she did. He had been the voice on the phone talking her back to quietude after her mother went back to Stars Hollow more times than she could count.

"Yeah."

"What's up with that?" he asked.

Lorelai rolled onto her back, head sticking past the end of the bed on one side, feet dangling off on the other. "It's... complicated."

"As if there's anything in your life that isn't," he teased gently.

She couldn't help but smile, picturing his brown eyes softening as they tended to when he was poking fun at her. Her expression faded quickly back into pensiveness, however. "The court gave my mom custody of me," she confided softly.

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"You okay?"

"Nope."

"I didn't think so. So you'll be moving?"

"I'm not changing schools or anything," she reassured, hearing that worry coming probably before he could even think of it himself. "No matter what, I'm staying at Chilton. I guess I'll just have to drive a little further to get there."

Tristan chuckled low. "God, I bet you'll take the bus to school and everything!"

"Delightfully plebian, isn't it?"

"Eh, it'll be good for you," Tristan joked, before both of them lapsed into thoughtful silence.

"I used to wish this would happen," Lorelai said quietly, after several quiet moments had passed between them. "It was all I could think about when I was little. She would come up to the door and tell me it was just gonna be her and me the way it used to be when I was younger, and then she'd sweep me up and take me back to Stars Hollow. But now... I don't know. I feel like I'm grown up now, you know? It's like at this point it's just..."

"Pointless?"

"How'd you know?"

"Mother's going through one of her parenting phases again."

"Health kick again?"

"No. Designated family hour, this time."

"Ew. Sorry."

"I can handle it, I'm tough."

"No you're not. You cried like a baby when I kicked you in the shin that one time."

"I was ten!"

"You still cried."

"Not the point of this conversation."

Lorelai sighed. "I guess not."

Tristan allowed them to fall into silence for a few minutes, then said, "You'll be okay. You've got a cool head, you know? And I've never met your mom, but from the way you used to talk about her, she sounds pretty awesome."

"So everyone claims," Lorelai replied.

"I gotta go," Tristan said. "I'll let Madeleine and Jake know you can't make it tonight."

"Thanks."

Lorelai hung up, and cradled the phone to her chest, staring thoughtfully at the ceiling.

* * *

><p>It was nearly seven by the time the phone rang in Lorelai's little office at the Independence Inn. Absently, she reached for the receiver. "Independence Inn, this is Lorelai Gilmore speaking. How may I help you?" she recited politely, barely paying attention as she tried to wade through the apparently endless mound of memos, invoices, and reports she had to sort through, sign, or respond to.<p>

"Lorelai Gilmore, where in God's name are you?"

She winced at the shrill tone in her mother's voice that surely meant she was furious. "Gee, I dunno Mom. You tell me, since you're the one who called. I couldn't _possibly_ be at the Inn, now could I?" she spat out.

"You told me you were coming to Hartford to have dinner with us and discuss arrangements at 6:30. It is now a quarter to 7 and you apparently haven't even left work yet!"

Lorelai's stomach dropped and she was sure that for a moment her heart froze in place. "Shit!"

"There's no need for language like that!" Emily spat out. Lorelai couldn't even muster up an apology for her outburst before she was off again. "What in God's name are you doing, telling Lorelai you will be at a certain place at a certain time and then not following through? _Especially_ now!" Lorelai could practically hear her mother's eyes roll through the phone. "Oh, never mind. It's exactly like you. God knows, being responsible for your daughter's sake couldn't possibly be a thought to cross your head."

It was an invitation to yet another famous Emily/Lorelai sparring match, but Lorelai had been working very hard at living up to something Chanda had told her a few weeks previously: "You do not have to attend every argument you're invited to." She was pretty sure it was the only way she was ever going to be able to deal with her mother.

"Apparently not," she muttered petulantly. "Listen, I will be _right_ there, Mom. I'm walking out the door right now, I'll see you by 7:15."

"Lorelai-!"

But Emily's protest was cut off as Lorelai slammed the phone back down on the cradle. With one strappy little heel on and the other awkwardly slipped under her toes from where she'd had it kicked partially off under the desk, purse dangling from one finger and her jacket snatched absentmindedly from the back of her chair, she rushed to the door of her office.

"Michel, cover the desk until Tobin gets in!" she shouted, not even looking at the Frenchman as she shot out the door, trying in vain to get her toes back into her shoes.

She all but crashed into the driver's seat of the Jeep, and she had the engine on and the vehicle in gear before she had even fully closed the door. She peeled out of the parking lot. She made good time out of Stars Hollow, but as she turned onto the highway she saw the numbers on her dashboard clock inching ever closer to seven p.m., and panic began to set in. Her foot weighed on the accelerator.

"Gotta have driving music," she said aloud, and began flipping through the increasingly pathetic offerings on the radio stations before realizing she would have to settle for the 80's hair metal station with a DJ who seemed to _almost_ have some knowledge of the genre, as it was the best she was going to get on this particular night. Mötley Crüe, she could handle. Jimmy Buffet, not so much.

The familiar chorus of Too Young To Fall In Love kept her mentally occupied as she flew down the highway. Just mentally occupied enough to avoid noticing her speedometer approaching 80, but not quite mentally occupied enough to avoid noticing the flashing red and blue lights in her rearview.

Lorelai uttered her second four-letter word of the evening.

* * *

><p>It was a great deal closer to 7:45 by the time Lorelai finally reached the Gilmore mansion. She pulled up outside the house and killed the engine, her eyes drawn automatically back to the speeding ticket, written up in blue ink, sitting accusingly in the passenger seat. For a moment, Lorelai felt like screaming. But no, she couldn't lose it right now. Rory was inside waiting for her, and she'd already let her down enough by being so late. She didn't need to be a basket case now that she finally had managed to arrive.<p>

She stared straight ahead for a few seconds, breathing deeply through her nose, then got out of the car and headed for the front door. She steeled herself a second time, and knocked.

Emily answered almost immediately.

"Come inside," she said stiffly.

Lorelai felt her hackles raising automatically.

"Let me take your coat," Emily said, and the disapproval was practically visible in the air around her. Lorelai shrugged out of her light autumn jacket and handed it mutely to her mother.

"You missed dinner, I'm afraid. Your father had business to attend to before he goes to bed, and we simply couldn't keep waiting on you."

"I can just grab something later," Lorelai replied tersely.

Emily pursed her lips. "Lorelai is in the sitting room," she said, gesturing to her daughter to precede her into the room where a surely disappointed blue-eyed fifteen-year-old was waiting for them. At that particularly cheery thought, Lorelai balked.

One thing Lorelai was very proud of was that, other than her greatest failure in not being able to keep her daughter safe in Stars Hollow and away from the cold world of the Hartford elite, she had never let her daughter down. She was always where she said she would be, when she said she would be (which was a great deal more than could be said of Rory's father), she did her best to cooperate with her parents for Rory's sake, she came through as far as birthday presents and the occasional day trips she had been allowed were concerned. But tonight, on this most important of nights, when she would tell her little girl the wonderful news that they were finally going to get to be a real family the way they had always been meant to be, she had disappointed her.

As loathe as Lorelai was to go into that sitting room and face the quietly sad look that Rory alone could give, she had kept her daughter waiting on her for more than an hour. She couldn't bring herself to make her wait any longer.

Entering the sitting room, she saw that her predictions had been correct. Rory was sitting on one of those stupid matching settees, dressed up very tidily in a pretty blue sweater, her hands folded quietly in her lap and eyes cast downwards, most of her face obscured by those new, fancy bangs.

"Hey, Sweets," Lorelai said, trying to paint on an apologetic smile. "Sorry I kept you guys waiting so long. Apparently the Hartford police don't take too kindly to mothers breaking the sound barrier trying to get here on time."

Rory looked up and gave her a small smile, the temperature of which could have frozen magma. "It's okay," she said, and it felt like a knife to Lorelai's gut to see how much her daughter wanted to mean that.

"No it's not, but it's sweet that you're trying," Lorelai said, trying to smooth over the hurt feelings with a small measure of lighthearted honesty. She sat down next to Rory while Emily took up residence on the opposite side of the coffee table. "Anyway, the reason I was coming over here tonight-"

"I know," Rory interrupted. "Grandma told me."

Lorelai's eyes widened and she shot an accusing look in her mother's direction. "Mom!" she exclaimed. "I asked you specifically to let me tell her!"

"I thought it would be better coming from me," Emily said primly. "There's no need to just spring things like that on her, Lorelai."

"_She_ is sitting right here," Rory reminded them.

Lorelai took a steadying breath as she turned back to her daughter. "Well, what do you think about this? I know it's got to be a big change for you..."

Rory's eyes skittered away from her mother's to focus somewhere over her left shoulder as she said, "I think it's good. Uh, great."

Not buying it for a second, Lorelai said, "Nuh-uh, kiddo. Try again. I can tell when you're lying." Rory's eyes moved back to hers and she opened her mouth with an obviously defensive look on her face, prepared to refute Lorelai's statement, but Lorelai preempted her. "It's fine if you're not totally okay with this. Talk to me, Sweets."

Rory must have been in a vindictive mood, ready to punish her mother for being late, or perhaps Lorelai brought out some hidden impulsive traits in her daughter, because for once she spoke without her usual diplomacy. Her desire to keep the peace was overridden by a jumbled mess of complicated emotion. "No, I'm not okay with it. I don't want to commute to school, and I'm not crazy about being so far away from my friends, and moving is such a hassle, and I just redecorated my room, and Stars Hollow is _boring!_"

Lorelai felt just a little bit kicked in the gut. Her dream from the night before, which had faded to hazy memory, was suddenly back and present full-force in her mind.

"I'm sorry you feel that way," she said through numb lips.

It was obvious that Rory's uncharacteristic outburst had startled even herself. "It's just... all kind of fast, you know?" She offered the words like a band-aid.

"I can understand that," Lorelai said. "I'm still having trouble processing it all, and I've had a whole weekend to think about it."

The blue-eyed girl nodded, frowning thoughtfully. "I don't really know how to feel."

"We used to talk about this, remember?" Lorelai said cajolingly, hating that she sounded a little desperate, breathlessly trying to convince her daughter that this was a good thing without _sounding_ like she was having to convince her because Emily was _right there_.

"Yes, we did," Rory said. "A long time ago. We haven't really talked about it at all lately."

Lorelai nodded. "I know. Mommy had some serious growing up of her own to do."

Rory touched her hand gently. It was the first time they'd had any physical contact since Lorelai had walked into the room. "I guess that's good, right?" she said, frowning.

"Yeah. Things haven't been right for a long time," Lorelai said. She sighed. "I don't know what I can say, kid. There's not much I can say about the commute or the distance from your friends, and I agree: moving _is_ a hassle. Unfortunately, nothing I can do to change that. But I tell you what, we can decorate your old room back home any way you want. And... give Stars Hollow a chance. You loved the town so much when you were young."

Rory didn't seem ready to respond to that last statement, so she addressed another issue. "Grandma and I talked it over and we thought you could take some of my stuff to the house in Stars Hollow tonight so that there's less to move on Saturday," Rory said. "Less of a hassle, right?"

"Yeah. Less of a hassle."

Lorelai looked intently at her daughter. She couldn't tell what Rory was trying to tell her by saying that. Rory was usually a pretty tough read, but she was even more inscrutable than ever at this moment. She took a moment to shoot a glance at Emily, who had been remarkably silent throughout this exchange, her mouth screwed up as if she were sucking on a lemon. As their eyes met, she got to her feet.

"I think perhaps you had better go. Lorelai has school in the morning, and I personally would like to turn in a little early."

It was as obvious a dismissal as Lorelai had ever heard. "Alright," she said, too drained to put up a fight about it.

"What, no hissy fit?" Emily asked caustically.

"Contrary to popular belief, I _can_ behave like an adult sometimes," Lorelai replied crossly. "I've had the longest day of my life today and I don't really feel like going fifteen rounds with you right now, even if I _haven't_ had more than five minutes to talk things over with my daughter yet. I'm sure you're mad at me for a variety of reasons, and maybe some of them are even justified, but I'm not going to fight with you over them right now."

Emily nodded curtly. "I'll have Wilhelmina assist you in carrying Lorelai's things to your car," she said coolly.

"Thank you," Lorelai replied. She glanced at Rory. "Hug?" she asked.

A little smile crossed Rory's lips. "Hug," she confirmed.

The two girls shared a tight embrace, and for a minute Lorelai felt like her worries were unfounded. But Rory pulled away a little too quickly, and avoided her eyes a little too intently for everything to be alright just yet.

* * *

><p>Lorelai pressed the traffic ticket up against the cool surface of the refrigerator and slapped a magnet shaped like a rose in the middle of it. "Shitty end to a shitty day," she muttered.<p>

By the time she had gotten back from Hartford, it was well after 8:30. Nowhere near her usual bedtime, but Lorelai was exhausted, physically and mentally, and she had managed to work herself into an emotional froth all over again. It had been easy to bury down most of her inner turmoil while she was at her parents' house, talking to her daughter. She was used to putting on a brave face for Rory's sake. But once she was out of her child's presence, everything in her that was terrifying her came bubbling up to the surface, compounded by Rory's looks and words and behavior over the course of their... the only word Lorelai could think to call it was "interview," as if her own daughter were some distant monarch who deigned to look down on her when it pleased her. Not so much because of any haughty mannerisms that Lorelai the Third (God, even that name sounded like some kind of royal title!) had picked up while living in Hartford, but just because of the tension and awkwardness of the encounter. It was a feeling that had been growing steadily in the undercurrent of their conversations for several years now, and it had peaked tonight.

All of this was churning around inside her. Standing there, staring unseeingly at the traffic ticket she still held pinned to the fridge despite the magnet holding it in place, she did her best to sort through her individual thoughts and emotions the way Chanda had taught her, so she could keep her head straight rather than get bogged down in an indecipherable tangle of emotions the way she had more than once over the years. It didn't really help, but she wasn't really trying. She didn't have the energy for self-analysis right now.

This once, she decided, it might be better to just not think for awhile. Just blank out for awhile and not worry about any of it until she had put a little distance between herself and the maelstrom in her head. In a few hours, or more likely tomorrow morning once she'd had some sleep, she'd be able to put all this in perspective.

She returned to the car and started unloading the boxes and bags Rory had sent home with her in the Jeep. There were more than just a few of them. God, Rory had a lot of stuff! "Maybe she is my daughter after all," Lorelai thought aloud, briefly humorous.

Eventually she got it all unloaded and stacked up in the kitchen several rows deep. She brushed imaginary dust from her palms with a quick slap and looked around in brief satisfaction. Then she pushed open the door to Rory's room, and the satisfaction immediately dried up and blew away.

It is a fact of life in the western world that people in general simply have too much _stuff_ and some of the stuff has to go _somewhere_. There has to be a spillover point for all the detritus of living. Your dresser drawer breaks and although your friend builds you a new one to match, the old one has to be put somewhere until trash day, and if trash day comes around and you happen to forget... Or perhaps you redecorated your bathroom, and the old cracked vanity that Kirk wanted to buy from you needed a place to stay until he came buy to pick it up, only he never did. Or maybe you volunteered to help organize the March Madness festival two years ago and all the extra colored streamers and a bag full of basketballs and one lonely child-sized basketball hoop find their way to your house with nowhere to go... Your old sewing machine, which you always meant to give to your daughter after you replaced it with a better model, needs somewhere to sit until your daughter comes to take possession of it...

It happens all too often, when a room in a house goes unused for a year or two. That empty, unused room gets to feel loved and important by becoming the stopping point for the flotsam and jetsam that we fail to handle more appropriately.

This was what had become of Rory's room. After nearly three years of being unoccupied, the random bits and pieces of Lorelai's life had somehow floated in there. There was hardly a foot of free space in the whole room.

Lorelai stood aghast, staring at the barely-visible floor, the dust-coated coverlet on the little twin bed. Suddenly, the room seemed symbolic of her relationship with her daughter Had she been subconsciously pushing Rory away, filling that space in her own life with nonsense and cobwebs? Was that why her firstborn seemed like a distant stranger? Had she done this?

A bitter taste filled her mouth and a dizzying mix of panic and resigned frustration filled her up. Lorelai fell on the mess in the little corner room, grabbing onto the broken maple-wood drawer that Luke had replaced, heaving it across the floor despite its weight, desperately pulling it through the kitchen and out the back door. She hurled it off the porch and into the backyard with a grunt of exertion, where the already badly damaged wood splintered into a dozen pieces. But Lorelai didn't even see the impact because she had already turned back inside. A bag containing twelve pairs of worn-out shoes were the next to go, landing on top of the splintered drawer. Lorelai moved with frenetic energy, trying to outrun the emotional upheaval that had been chasing her down all day, following up the shoes with the separate pieces of the old vanity.

Next, she laid hands on an ancient, horrible coatrack her mother had given her some years ago. It was too heavy for her, but adrenaline was shooting through Lorelai's veins and she managed to tilt the thing enough to drag it across the floor. She felt a vindictive kind of triumph.

Moving backwards as she heaved the coatrack after her, Lorelai didn't see the bag of basketballs in her path until she stepped on one of them and slipped, crashing to the floor with the coatrack landing across her tangled-up legs. She let out a cry more of surprise than pain, and found herself somewhat trapped by the heavy object. After a moment of claustrophobic wriggling, she freed herself and scooted on her knees to the kitchen, unexpected hot tears running down her cheeks.

She seized the phone and dialed the first number that came to mind. After three rings, she got a machine message: _"Hello, you have reached the office of Dr. Chanda Fleming. Our normal office hours are Monday thru Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. If you are calling outside these hours, you may leave a message or-"_

Lorelai hung up with unnatural violence and let out a disappointed moan, and wondered if she was having a panic attack. It was a tremendous part of her personal mythology that she was Wonder Woman, able to take any blow and keep on pushing forward, but right now she felt about twelve years old and definitely not super-strong. It had been the crappiest day in the history of crappy days, and every single insecurity she had ever had about herself was raging right across the surface of her awareness rather than remaining safely in their usual lock-box deep in her psyche.

Before she could think too hard about what she was doing, she dialed again, working hard to regulate her breathing before her call was answered.

* * *

><p>Luke was in the midst of closing down the diner when the phone rang. He almost didn't answer, but thought perhaps it might be one of his delivery guys calling about a change of schedule. "Luke's," he barked into the receiver.<p>

"Hey, Luke," came Lorelai's voice over the other end of the line.

He stopped his attempt to one-handedly fill the salt shakers. "Lorelai?" he asked, concerned. Her voice sounded odd and uncertain.

"Yeah, hi," she said, sounding distracted. "I, um, I was wondering if you would... if I could... get your help with some stuff."

"What, now?"

"Yes."

No quip, no 'actually I was thinking last week would be convenient,' sarcasm. Something really was up with her. "What do you need?" he asked hesitantly.

"I'm trying to move some stuff and I can't do it by myself," she said.

"I'll be there in a few minutes," he responded immediately.

"Thanks, Luke."

He hung up and took the stairs two at a time up to the apartment over the diner. Jess was sitting at the little kitchen table flipping through a chemistry textbook, but he looked up when his uncle entered the apartment.

"Lorelai needs my help with some stuff," he said. "Think you can finish closing before you get back to that?"

"What's left to do?"

"I just need you to mop and finish up with the salt."

Jess nodded. "Sure, no problem," he said easily.

Luke offered him a quick smile, then headed right back down the stairs and out through the darkened diner, heading for the little house on Lilac Street.

* * *

><p>Lorelai was sitting at the kitchen table playing idly with her fingers when Luke arrived. She looked up and gave him a wan smile. "Thanks for coming on such short notice," she said. Luke noticed in stunned amazement that her eyes were tinged a little red, as if she had been crying before he got there. Her hair looked a little frazzled as well.<p>

"You look like hell," he said without thinking.

"Just what every girl wants to hear," she said, smirking. But her animation didn't last long. She seemed quiet and drained and tired and very young.

He wondered if she had called because she really needed help with something, or if she had just needed someone around and didn't know how to ask. But if that was the case, he had no idea why she would call him, of all people. They were friends, true, but usually their non-diner-related interactions consisted of him being baffled by the challenges of being parents to a teenage boy and Lorelai offering him her always helpful advice. The idea of her turning to him to be her confidante was a complete reversal of roles. He was sure if she ever talked to anyone about stuff, it was Sookie. But... she _had_ called.

"So, um, I just kind of have... a lot of stuff in Rory's room that I need to move," she said.

Okay, so maybe she _did_ have a practical reason for calling him over here. He felt ridiculous for thinking maybe she had just wanted him for the _company_. After all these years of their unorthodox friendship, he ought to know by now that she wasn't gonna look to him as anything more than her coffee provider and quasi-father to Jess.

He peered into the room and felt his eyes involuntarily widen. "Jeez," he muttered. "You're not kidding." Observing that a truly horrifying coatrack was tipped over across the middle of the floor, complete with several deep gouges in the wood where it seemed to have been dragged, he couldn't help but ask, "What happened here?"

She got up and came to join him in the doorway. "Minor moving accident," she explained.

"Ah."

"And on that note... what do you say we start with my mother's most recent Christmas monstrosity?" she suggested, gesturing to the coatrack.

Luke easily acquiesced, and the pair of them spent the next hour in relative silence as they cleared the little bedroom out. Most of the junk went up to the attic, some of it went in the trash, and the sparkly blue Christmas garland ended up on the sofa because neither of them could figure out what to do with it. He didn't ask her why a bunch of old shoes and a pile of broken wood were lying in the yard for him to retrieve; she didn't complain when he insisted on organizing the things they took up to the attic instead of just stuffing it up there and leaving it where it lay.

The more time passed with Lorelai silent, or nearly so, the more concerned he became. Something really was bothering her. Luke wasn't a touchy-feely guy by nature, but he resolved to try to talk to her about whatever was on her mind. Aside from Jess, Lorelai was the only person he really felt comfortable talking with about serious things. He hoped she felt equally comfortable with him, at least enough to know that she _could_ come to him about things, whether she actually did or not.

By the time ten-thirty rolled around, they had completed their task and Lorelai flopped tiredly into a chair at the kitchen table.

He took a seat next to her. "What's going on?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you."

"What about me?"

He rolled his eyes. Typical Lorelai, making it as hard as possible to get to the point. "You've hardly said more than two sentences all night."

"So?"

"So, usually I'm trying desperately to shut you up so I can get a word in edgewise."

"I'd think you'd welcome the change."

"Not the point," he said, feeling a combination of annoyance at the runaround and relief that she sounded a little more like herself. "What's bothering you?"

She sighed, staring at her hand tracing circles on the tabletop, letting silence descend for a minute before she spoke. "I think I kind of lost it tonight," she said with a low, humorless chuckle. "I haven't felt this out of control in years."

"Yeah?" he prompted gently.

"I went to see Rory tonight," she said. "She isn't entirely happy about moving to Stars Hollow."

"What? No way!"

She shrugged. "She's fifteen. She doesn't want to live so far away from all her friends. It's normal, I guess, but it really just hit me hard."

"You've wanted this for a long time," he said.

Lorelai tilted her head in acknowledgement, still not really meeting his eyes. "Yes. I have," she agreed. "But you know what I realized tonight? I realized that in all those dreams I've had over the years, of Rory coming back to me, she's still five years old. I've had this idea in my head that someday I would get her back and we'd just... pick up where we left off. But we can't do that, can we? She's changed. I've changed. We're not the same people we were ten years ago. She isn't a little girl who still thinks her mother's perfect, and I'm not... well, I'm _really_ not the same girl I was. I've been hanging onto some fantasy in my mind of who she would be and who I would be when that day finally came. I've been imagining some mythical Lorelai Gilmore who wasn't her_ or_ me the way we are now."

Luke nodded in understanding. "Nothing in life ever turns out the way we imagined," he said.

"Probably not. But it just really threw me to realize that it wasn't ever going to be like I wanted."

"Doesn't mean it can't still be good."

She smiled. It wasn't her usual ten-zillion-gigawatt smile, it was something softer and more about warmth than sparkle, but she looked calm and happy again. "No, it doesn't," she agreed.

"I should head back," he said gruffly. "Jess was closing down when I left."

She nodded her understanding. "Say hi for me."

"Will do."

Luke got to his feet and headed for the door, leaving her still sitting there at the kitchen table. Before he left the room, however, she called out to him and he paused, glancing over his shoulder at her.

"Thanks, Luke," she said.

He nodded, and headed out the door.

* * *

><p><strong>Stay tuned for the next episode of Devil Take The Hindmost: <strong>

"The Lorelais First Day In Stars Hollow"  
>Jess and Lane make an effort to make Rory feel welcome in Stars Hollow, while Luke has a surprising meeting with Jess's principal.<p> 


End file.
